Background Report by Finnish Environment Institute &Federation of Finninsh Textile and Clothing Industries
Executive Summary
This study was carried out in major Finnish textilecompanies in order to create an environmental impact profile for wet processing in Finland as a part of drafting the Best Available Technique (BAT) Referencedocuments for the European IPPC-bureau.
Over 100 companies received the questionnaire prepared in co-operation with the Finnish Apparel and Textile organisation, FINATEX, and over 50companies answered. Five major textile companies with wet processing capacity exceeding about 5 tonnes per day, were selected for system boundarydefinitions.
None of the Finnish companies' treatment capacity does,however, exceed 10 tonnes a day as specified in section 6.2 of Annex 1 ofdirective 96/61/ EC. One company with wet treatments for mainly 100% syntheticfabrics was also included to the research even if the production capacity doesnot exceed 5 tonnes a day.
System boundaries were defined for alternative process technologies based on the results of the survey, presented in Tables 1 and 2. The use ofresources and process emissions are, however, monitored for the whole wet processing only in the companies under study.
No remarkable differences in energy and water consumptionbetween continuous and batch wet processing could be measured.
Lowest dyeing liquor ratios were reported on jet machinesand highest on winch dyeing machines. Dyestuff consumption depends on thecolour shade required; some dyes have, however, low fixation rates, such as reactiveand sulphur dyes, only 60% on average.
About 20% of the process liquor containing unfixeddyestuffs and auxiliaries end in sewage treatments. These chemicals are notrecovered and reused in the companies under study. All industrial plants in Finland lead their waste-water to municipal sewage treatment plants, which carry out wastewateranalysing and control. All textile plants, which use more than 50 tonnesorganic solvents per year, are under official off-gas control in Finland.
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