Best Water, Best Textile Industry
The textile and clothing industries have a significant contribution to Portugal's economic activity, as well as to its export balance. However, it is also one of the industries with the greatest impact on water consumption. It is estimated that between 100 and 150 liters of water are required to process one kilogram of textile fiber, including cotton, polyester and other materials.
These impacts are not limited to water consumption. In the transformation processes of the textile industry several chemical compounds with negative effects on human health and the environment are used together with water, such as dyes and other types of chemical reagents and end up, if not removed or treated, in the final receiving medium, with the consequent degradation of the latter.
Water, a precious and scarce commodity, is indispensable in the textile industry and in virtually all human activities, and its demand is predicted to increase by 50% by 2030 - compared to today. This, combined with increasing climate variability, longer periods of drought or extreme rainfall, and increased pressure from other human activities, puts the economic value of water at a high level and tends to be reflected in its price as a raw material.
Bondalti Water Solutions, in the continuous search for solutions that meet the challenges of today and the future, believes that new treatment processes, combined with the application of new analysis and control tools such as artificial intelligence, will be fundamental pillars in the reduction of water use in the textile and clothing industry and in the complete closure of the water cycle in these industries. The production and reuse of high quality water from textile effluents is one of the goals that Bondalti Water has in mind when joining the ambitious GIATEX project.
The optimization of all water flows in these industries, both upstream of the treatment processes and in the treatment units themselves, including new treatment technologies and decision processes, is an area that has a great margin for improvement in the current panorama of the industry and in which Bondalti Water bets for the present and future, with the ambition and the goal of being a reference partner and a supplier of innovative solutions for the challenges of the modern textile industry, environmentally aware and economically competitive.
Technical Data Sheet
GIATEX Project: Intelligent Water Management in the Textile and Apparel Industry
Project Reference | no. C644943052-00000050
Project Number | no. 17
Funding Program | Recovery and Resilience Plan
Component | C5: Corporate Capitalization and Innovation
Measure | RE-C05-i01.01 - Mobilizing Agendas/Alliances for Business Innovation
Eligible Investment | 18 141 273,21 €
Incentive | 11 385 568,03 €
Start Date | 01/10/2022
Completion Date | 30/09/2025
Goal
The GIATEX project aims to respond to the challenges faced by textile finishing companies in terms of intensive water consumption.
To this end, it is intended to develop a set of tools that enable companies:
1. Reduce the specific water consumption (use of less intensive ennoblement technologies and adoption of treatment technologies that allow water reuse)
2. Support the decision on the final destination of the water (through the integration of monitoring and process control systems and a new water management support tool).
The main activities of the project are:
- Study and characterization of wet processes;
- R&D in intelligent process monitoring systems;
- R&D in ennoblement technologies with lower water consumption;
- R&D in technologies for the treatment of wastewater resulting from the textile enameling process;
- Implementation of the developed technologies in pilot units;
- Development of a decision support computer tool for water management.
Expected Results
Consortium
The GIATEX project is composed of 27 partners, of which 5 are non-SME companies, 12 are SME companies, 8 are Non-Business Entities from the Research and Innovation System, and 2 are Local Government Institutions.
