Water Solutions

Textile

FilmTec™ Fortlife™ XC120 Element -- A boon for Textile

Industry in Tamil Nadu, India
The Textile Industry is the second largest employer in India and has been greatly impacted by the region’s growing water crisis. Textile
mills in the Tamil Nadu – the hub of the textile industry - are being squeezed by lack of water availability and stringent TDS discharge
regulations. To address these challenges, factories must implement expensive zero liquid discharge (ZLD) treatment methods to maximize
wastewater recovery for reuse and eliminate water discharge to the environment. Traditional ZLD approaches are cost prohibitive, thus to
remain competitive in the global Textile market, it is imperative for textile owners in India to find a cost effective ZLD solution.

The Challenge
The region’s textile industry has been employing Minimal Liquid Discharge (MLD) using
reverse osmosis (RO), followed by evaporation for more than a decade to meet local zero liquid
discharge (ZLD) requirements. Using a hybrid MLD-ZLD process lowers the cost of traditional
thermal ZLD by up to 60%, but the costs are still more than wastewater management costs Fast Facts
of other textile factories around the world where ZLD is not required. To remain competitive
Location / Commissioning
in the world’s textile market, wastewater treatment costs must be further reduced. Innovative
Tirupur, TamilNadu – India /2021
membrane technology to push the MLD process more and reduce the volume of water needing
– Trial period of 4 Months.
thermal treatment is needed to achieve this cost benefit.
Application / Market:
Zero Liquid Discharge in Textiles
The Solution
Water type:
An innovative FilmTec™ Fortilife™ XC120 elements has been designed with the above challenge RO Reject
in mind. Systems using this element can achieve a total dissolved solid concentration of
Contractor / End User:
120,000 mg/L without exceed the 1200 psi pressure limits of standard available reverse osmosis
Textile End User
equipment (pumps, pressure vessels, energy recovery devices, etc.). When using this element,
the cost of the MLD-ZLD treatment process is impacted in two ways: 1. Achieves a 50% higher
reject concentration and lowers the reject volume requiring expensive thermal treatment; and
2. Equipment costs are minimized by using conventional RO equipment and avoiding expensive
and lesser available specialty ultra-high pressure equipment.
Case Study
M/s Victus dyeing has a 1.9 MLD (79 m3/h) capacity individual textile wastewater treatment plant in Tirupur, a city in Tamil Nadu. This
factory currently employs hybrid MLD-ZLD wastewater treatment process but is motivated to increase the water recovery of the MLD
portion of the system to reduce the volume of water thermally treated. A 3-month field trial in cooperation with M/s. Systech Aqua
Solution, the project management consultant and O&M Operator, was carried out to characterize the flow, recovery and salt rejection
performance of FilmTec™ Fortilife™ XC120 membranes when treating the RO reject of the current MLD process. A summary of the results
of the trial are provided in the table below.

Description FilmTec™ Fortilife™ XC120

Feed Flow 7 m3/h

System Recovery ~20%
Feed TDS 90,000 mg/L
Permeate TDS <1000 mg/L
Reject TDS ~120,000 mg/L
Feed pressure 59 bar
O&M Cost Savings in % 10-15%

The demonstrated benefits the FilmTec™ Fortilife™ XC-120 membranes treated a 90,000 mg/L sodium sulfate rich textile wastewater are:
• Excellent rejection of TDS despite high TDS feed levels yielding a pure permeate with TDS < 1000 mg/L (< 2 % passage).
• A TDS concentration of 120,000 mg/L could be achieved at a feed pressure ranging to 60 bar, leaving more room to increase pressure
to concentrate the TDS more. (note: extrapolating these results to the pressure limit of the element, 80 bar indicates concentrations of
140,000 mg/L is possible).
• Ability to recover an additional 20% more water lowering the volume of water requiring thermal treatment.

Water Solutions
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