Water recycling in the textile industry

Overview water recycling in different industries

Water reuse in the textile industry

The textile industry is very water intensive. Water is used for cleaning the raw material and for many flushing steps during the whole production. Produced waste water has to be cleaned from, fat, oil, color and other chemicals, which are used during the several production steps. The cleaning process depends on the kind of wastewater (not every plant applies the same production process) and also on the amount of used water. Also not all plants use the same chemicals, especially companies with a special standard (environmental) try to keep water cleaned in all steps of production. So the concepts, to treat the water can differ from each other.

It is quite difficult to define a general quality standard for textile water reuse because of the different requirements of each fiber (silk, cotton, polyester etc.), of the textile process (e.g., scouring, desizing, dyeing, washing, etc.) and because of the different quality required for the final fabric.
It appears to be, that membrane filtration would be a preferable option compared to other wastewater treatment techniques because of the constant quality of effluent, that is partly or almost completely softened and free of color and surfactants^[1].

[1] A. Rossi, F. Malpei, L. Bonomo, R. Bianchi, Textile wastewater reuse in northern Italy. Milan, Italy 1999

Information about water reuse in the paper and food and beverage industry,
Water disinfection and reuse in green house horticulture
Information about water treatment and reuse of oily wastewater

Water reuse in the poultry industry

Find books about water recycling

Should you know of any other interesting or more recent book, report, article or publication, concerning water reuse in textile industry please let us know, so that we can include reported case-studies in the above overview.