The CO2 footprint is used to describe the complete greenhouse gas emissions which are associated with a product. Awareness is only given when figures are permanently announced. For textile products Benninger is taking over at the global level the leading role to inform end-users about the carbon footprint of textiles. Textile engineers and experts receive detailed information about each single textile process and recipe. This will open new sights and strengthen the awareness to avoid CO2 emissions.
These are the triggers for new innovations and for a cleaner world. Any visitor of the Benninger booth at ITMA can discover with its expertise his own textile footprint.
Benninger has chosen several options to show carbon reductions in textile finishing. The carbon hotspots identified are minimizing the number of drying processes, minimizing steam and water consumption during washing processes, thanks to high efficiency washing, and replacing the resource intensive exhaust dyeing process by CPB dyeing
Upgrading quality standards
Cotton as a natural fibre requires a huge amount of arable land and irrigation water. Cotton prices are rising since years and reached a peak in 2010. Especially long staple cotton is hardly available. As a consequence more and more short stable cotton is used.
Mercerizing is getting more and more important in order to keep the high quality standard. The worldwide cotton shortage leads to a remarkable increase in man-made cellulosic fibres such as viscose and tencel.
State-of-the-art viscose fibre manufacturing plants allow to produce fibres nearly carbon neutral. Pulp is received from trees with embedded CO2 and water consumption is only 1/50 compared to cotton farming.
Benninger will present at ITMA a new mercerizing concept which is suitable for mercerizing cotton, and also causiticizing viscose fibres, for both woven and knitted fabrics. Mercerized or causticized textiles do require less chemicals and less dyestuff in the textile processing chain. Benninger’s wet on wet mercerizing concept does not require a resource intensive intermediated drying stage. Consequently carbon emissions are reduced by 40 per cent.
Washing on Benninger’s high efficiency Trikoflex drum washer with mechanical supported front and back washing reduces water consumption by more than 50 per cent compared to classical washers. Simultaneously, the energy required to heat up the washing water (biggest carbon polluter) is reduced. This has its biggest impact on carbon reduction. Additionally the integrated heat recovery system and the insulation of the washing box reduce the energy requirement.
Despite the massive efforts of machine designers to reduce the liquor ratio, the finishing of knitwear in jet dyeing machines still requires large amounts of water and therefore also large amounts of energy. By contrast, in addition to quality benefits the continuous open width finishing process also offers savings, particularly in terms of water and energy. In continuous mode, CO2 emissions can be reduced by nearly two-thirds in comparison to exhaust dyeing processes (liquor ratio of 1:7). Benninger’s Trikoflex bleaching and washing plants and the Benninger Küsters dye pad suit this type of application perfectly.
With the CPB dyeing process the reactive dye is fixed at room temperature. Thanks to modern CPB dyeing centres with controlled dyeing conditions and the developments in terms of the dyes themselves, this method for cellulose fibres for woven fabrics and knitwear can be used without restriction anywhere in the world. Savings are made not only because the dye is set at room temperature, but also because the intermediate drying process after the dye application on a hotflue is eliminated.
The heart of a CPB dyeing station is the padder. The Benninger Küsters dye pad is the only dyeing padder in the world which features the original S-Roll technology. This allows to run product-specific correction profiles for the dye application. As a result, this technique therefore not only sets the benchmark from an environmental and commercial point of view, but also in terms of quality.
Benninger will show at ITMA a complete CPB dyeing center. Special highlights such as dyeing with only 2 l dye liquor during nip dyeing and just in time dyestuff solution preparation improve the process reproducibility and reliability, but reduce another time the consumption of dyes and chemicals.
Another ITMA highlight is Benninger’s new remote management information system which is suitable for all types of smartphones and table PCs. Important machine and recipe figures will be available at any time and any place. Besides production data and machine status information, machine efficiency and maintenance status, the actual consumption data will also be judged and graphically shown as carbon footprint.
Textile products which are finished on Benninger systems have an excellent impact on the environment. What particularly stands out is the low water consumption of the Benninger finishing machines for knitwear and woven fabrics. Besides, of importance is the recycling of water and energy from Benninger plants, with the aid of which it is now possible to refine textile systems to the stage where the discharge of waste water is reduced to zero.