Textile Industry

Textiles, one of the major industries in the world consists of numerousprocesses like spinning, weaving, dyeing, singeing, and scouring. The dyeing process specifically is extremely water intensive. Roughly about 200 L of water is used to produce 1 kg of textile.

Depending on the type of fibre used -cellulose, protein or synthetic, various kinds of dyes areconsumed. They include reactive, direct, napthol, indigo, acid, lanaset, disperse dyes etc. Thus, the key challenge in setting up a treatment process is to be able to handle all these different dyes. Besides dyes, the waste water produced also contains trace metals such as Cr, As, Cu and Zn which are capable of harming the environment and human health.

If left incorrectly treated, thetextile waste water can cause haemorrhage, ulceration of skin, nausea, skin irritation and dermatitis. The chemicals present in the water block the sunlight and increase the biological oxygen demand thereby inhibiting photosynthesis and reoxygenation process.

The effluent water discharged from the textile industries undergoes various physio-chemical processes such as flocculation, and coagulation followed by biological treatments for the removal of nitrogen, organics, phosphorous and metal.The whole treatment process involves three steps:

1. Primary treatment / Physio-chemical treatment

  1. The primary treatment involves removal of suspended solids, oil and grease, and gritty materials.
  2. Recommended process: – Dissolved air flotation (DAF)

2. Secondary treatment / Biological treatment

  1. The secondary treatment is carried out by microorganisms under aerobic or anaerobic conditions and involves the reduction of BOD, COD and nutrients present in the water.
  2. Recommended process: – Membrane bioreactor (MBR)

3. Tertiary treatment

  1. The tertiary treatment involves the use of filtration process, ultrafiltration (UF), reverse osmosis (RO) and ion exchange to remove the final contaminants in the wastewater.
  2. Recommended process: – Reverse osmosis (RO)

4. Zero liquid discharge

  1. Evaporator (PFET) and Crystallizer (MEE) are used further to treat the reject of tertiary treatment.
  2. Recommended process: – Polymeric film evaporation technology (PFET)
    At the end of all these processes we are able to get approximately 90% of pure water from the effluent fed. Arvind Envisol has a vast experience and installation base in the textile industry and a thorough knowledge of its various manufacturing processes and also its requirement for uninterrupted water supply.

At the end of all these processes we are able to get approximately 90% of pure water from the effluent fed. Arvind Envisol has a vast experience and installation base in the textile industry and a thorough knowledge of its various manufacturing processes and also its requirement for uninterrupted water supply.

Process Water Consumption (L/1000 kg of products)
Sizing 500-8200
Desizing 2500-21000
Scouring 20000-45000
Bleaching 2500-25000
Scouring 20000-45000
Mercerizing 17000-32000
Scouring 20000-45000
Dyeing 10000-300000
Printing 8000-16000
Source of effluent generation Parameters
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  pH COD(mg/L) BOD(mg/L)
Process Effluent      
Scouring 10-13 1200-3300 260-400
Bleaching 8.5-9.6 150-500 50-100
Mercerizing 8-10 100-200 20-50
Dyeing 7-10 1000-3000 400-1200
Process Effluent      
After beaching 8-9 50-100 10-20
After acid rinsing 6.5-7.6 120-250 25-50
After acid rinsing 6.5-7.6 120-250 25-50
After dyeing (hot wash) 7.5-8.5 300-500 100-200
After dyeing (acid & soap wash) 7.5-8.64 50-100 25-50
After dyeing (final wash) 7-7.8 25-50  
Printing washing 8-9 250-450 115-150
Blanket washing of rotary printer 7-8 100-150 25-50