Water management in textile industry: Technical and economic aspects

Textile industry is an intensive water use sector. Consequently, enormous quantities of wastewater are generated from different manufacturing processes. Numerous opportunities for water reuse could be exploited by rational management of water use and reuse via segregation and upgrading of specific effluents using membrane filtration systems comprising ultrafiltration (UF) and reverse osmosis (RO). This paper is an endeavor to develop technoeconomic indicators for extended water reuse applications in textile industry using UF and RO. Extensive data gathered from a typical Egyptian dye house have been utilized to rationalize water use and reuse management based on different levels of pollutants in waste streams. A developed rationale enabled the identification of four applicable intervention scenarios comprising three reuse scenarios ranging from limited reuse (about 25%) to maximum reuse (about 87%) and a total end of the pipe treatment scenario. The financial assessment for a typical wastewater load (about 3500 m3/day) reveals that the maximum reuse scenario comprising UF, two stage RO in addition to direct use and low press RO is the most preferred one. Further, sensitivity analysis indicates that the annual cost of the total end of pipe treatment scenario will equal the annual cost of the maximum reuse scenario when the unit cost are US$ 0.5, 0.43 and 0.3 per cubic meter for wastewater treatment, RO and UF respectively.