ECWRTI: water recycling in the textile industry

The ECWRTI project is about a technological concept (EColoRO) about water recycling. It separates the water, organometallics and salty brine and creates clean water that can be fully re-used.

In short:

The ECWRTI project brought a new technological concept to market
This technique called EColoRO
It allows the textile industry to dye without waste and fully re-use water

Reducing water usage in textile industry

Global freshwater availability is under permanent stress. Only 2,5% of all water available on our planet is potable fresh water of which most is present in ice caps. A mere 0,3% is directly available for consumption. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has calculated that due to increasing population the global water consumption will rise dramatically over the coming years. This will lead to an increasing stress on available freshwater sources, increased local drought risks and reducing the availability of potable water for consumption.

The European Environment Agency states that about 44 % of total water abstraction in Europe is used for industry and energy production and only 15% for public water supply. From the industrial water consumption approximately half is used as cooling water for energy production while the other half is predominantly used for process and manufacturing industries in chemicals, food and feed, paper and pulp, oil and gas, textile, metals, minerals and mining sectors.

The EColoRO concept slashes both water consumption and costs using environmentally responsible technologies

Closing the waterloop

The ECWRTI project brought a new technological concept to the market that closes the waterloop by separating the water, organometallics and salty brine and creating a produced clean water that can be fully re-used in water recycling.

The EColoRO technology has two major advantages: it enables textile mills to reduce fresh water consumption by up to 90 percent, and it lowers their wastewater treatment costs. Other advantages include relatively low energy consumption, no additional chemicals, and no required changes to existing processes. EColoRO’s innovative approach integrates electrocoagulation with systems that are already being used in industrial applications, accelerating the step to commercial market implementation when the project completes.

The ECWRTI consortium consisted of 7 partners from SMEs, end-users, research institutes and textile confederations from four EU countries with the Institute for Sustainable Process Technology as project coordinator.