Break-through of Mass Integration in Textile Industry through Development of Generic Water Recycle Schemes.

As a result of a long term South African – Danish research co-operation on Cleaner Production in textile industry, a number of generic and widely applicable water recycle schemes for textile wet processing has been developed, and the first break-through of water recycling has been achieved. Textile processing is one of the largest and oldest industries world-wide and responsible for a substantial resource consumption and pollution. Especially the wet processing part of the industry, i.e. pre-treatment, dyeing, printing and finishing, is polluting and resource consuming in terms of both water, energy and chemicals. It entails a vast variety of water consuming processes, and like in most industries, fresh water is used in all processes with almost no exceptions. Between researchers, it was known for many years that fresh water is not needed by all processes taking place in textile wet treatment. But sound conservatism and consideration for product quality in the industry have till recently prevented water reuse from breaking through in practice. A four year research program on industrial water reuse, however, recently resulted in the first break-through of water reuse in Danish textile industry: one polyester dyehouse, Trevira Neckelmann A/S, has now for two consecutive years successfully implemented direct water recycling saving 40 % water. Mass Integration and water pinch techniques were used to identify the potentials and combined with textile intelligence to achieve the best system design for the reuse of water, energy and chemicals. The same approach of combining pinch techniques and textile intelligence was applied in South African textile industry. System designs for water recycling in both cotton and acrylic wet treatment were developed. The system for cotton was successfully documented in full scale, and the system for acrylic is being tested. The research has resulted in a number of generic solutions for water recycling in the wet treatment of polyester, cotton and acrylic being generally applicable in textile wet processing world-wide. The industry and the dissemination potentials are huge.