Textile Processing Wastewater Reclamation, a Cost Effective Engineering Approach

Summary

Water is perhaps one of the most expensive and scarce commodity desired by the Textile processing Industries of the so-called third world as well as developed countries these days. The heavy costs of Textile processing industries especially Dyeing and Printing can be cut down to a much comprehendible level if only the process water can be reclaimed or recycled via an efficient process. Nevertheless, this objective is achievable using technologies such as Reverse Osmosis etc., but often these expensive reclamation techniques costs more than the amount of water reclaimed, plus a very high initial budget refrains the low capital setups to adapt them. Being a Textile Engineer and after studying and researching over numerous dyes and their process waste water, I’ve finally come to propose an efficient setup using the easily available natural resources (such as Green sand etc) and cheap chemicals to reclaim the dyeing and printing waste water. The technique has been currently adopted successfully by one of the leading Terry exporters of Pakistan, Nakshbandi Textile Industries (Pvt.) Ltd., and plans to expand the project on national level by the Govt. of Pakistan are under observation. The key factors of the project are:
· A combination of simple techniques such as Aeration, Coagulation and sand filtration with an induction of chemical treatments such as oxidation and reduction.
· Cost effectiveness
· Low maintenance and installation budget
· Easy adaptation for different types of dyestuff such as Vat dyes, direct dyes and Reactive dyes
· No chemical or biochemical aftereffects of the product.
· 70%-90% efficiency for reclaiming the wastewater, maintaining the desired levels of TDS, BDS, pH, and other parameters, with respect to irrigation and/or Dyeing and printing processes.
I hope that I would be given a chance to share this research with other scholars at the 82nd world Textile Conference.

This paper was first published on the earlier Egytex website. The text above is the summary that was published there.