EUROTEX KNITWEAR LTD, well known for its knit items, is serving the global apparel market for the last 15 years. It has a dyeing capacity of 45 tons per day. To meet its commitment to sustainable development, the knit manufacturing industry is continuously working on various initiatives to be more efficient in terms of using its resources. As a part of this continuity, Eurotex has installed the dyeing machines of Turkish dyeing machinery manufacturer IDES to be more energy efficient and to increase its production with limited space.
IDES is supporting the textile dyeing industry for the last 9 years and it has developed energy and space-saving dyeing machines which can help the dyeing facilities to develop capacity in energy and space. Its machines are renowned for their innovative design, powerful pumps, efficient motors, unique J-box, and special folding system without plaiter.
Textile has tried to find out how EUROTEX is on the way to easing the problem of space and energy scarcity with the IDES machines by visiting their factory and talking to the managers.
“When a factory wants to expand the production capacity, availability of space becomes a big challenge and the cost of space is rising day by day. In this situation, these space-saving IDES machines’ arrival is a very positive sign for us and its demand will grow in the future,” Kanouj Chakma (Ziko), General Manager of EUROTEX KNITWEAR LTD. shared with Textile Today.
“As fuel and raw material costs are rising day by day, there is no alternative to saving energy and other resources in production to remain profitable. In this situation, IDES’s energy-saving machines will help us remain competitive in the market,” he also added.
EUROTEX has completed the installment of 8 IDES machines with a capacity of dyeing 22 tons of fabrics on a single floor and the erection of some other machines is going on to raise the dying capacity to 35 tons. Right now, it has the capacity to dye 45 tons per day which they are planning to extend to 60 tons in the future.
Mostafa Alam, Assistant Manager, EUROTEX KNITWEAR LTD. told Textile Today that they are running the IDES machines on full load whereas the conventional machines need to be run with a lower load compared to the loading capacity.
“With the IDES machines, we can dye fabrics with a 1:5 liquor ratio in the 1st bath, and in the second bath, it is 1:2.5 which saves a lot of chemicals and energy compared to the conventional machines,” Mostafa Alam said.
With the IDES machines, dyeing in EUROTEX takes about 48 to 52 liters of water for one kg of fabrics whereas, in conventional machines, it takes about 70 liters in the same facility.
According to Mostafa Alam’s experience, the specially designed water pumping system in the machines makes water reach the nozzles and the dyeing bath faster. With this system, the machines conduct block wash instead of overflow wash which saves lots of water.
Mostafa Alam also finds fewer crease marks on the fabrics even if they are heavy due to the wider nozzles of the IDES machine with a capacity of 200 kgs. IDES machines have 165 mm nozzles whereas the conventional machines’ nozzles are 120 mm.
In case of space occupancy, the IDES machines take 35% to 40% less space compared to the conventional machines due to the lower width of the J-box and the absence of any plaiter for fabric folding.
But if the plaiter is not present in the machine, then how the fabrics do fold—replying to the question Engr. Rezaul Karim (Reza), CEO of Texmedia Engineering said that the folding takes place with the forward-backward movement of the fabric due to the water pressure.
“The nozzles used in the machines are one part, no joint can be found here and we provide a lifetime guarantee of the nozzles,” Rezaul Karim said to Textile Today.
The special design of the bottom collector pipe system as well as the special specification of the water distribution system for the nozzles make the IDES machines unique in the market.
“The bottom collector pipe system is connected with each nozzle with a unique pipe and water is collected with these pipes and is sent back to the nozzles by passing it through a heat exchanger,” explaining the system Rezaul Karim said.
The automation system of these IDES machines is European standard with technologies such as Sedomat process controller, C-Tex, Fuji inverter, ABB PLC, etc.
Al Amin Akas was conducting a comparative study on the use of energy and space between conventional and IDES exhaust dyeing machines at EUROTEX. He is a 3rd-year student of the Textile Engineering Department of Dr. M A Wazed Miah Textile Engineering College, Rangpur.
In this study, he has conducted a quantitative analysis of space occupation and energy consumption of the same capacity IDES and conventional dyeing machines. He calculated the area of occupancy of both machines and finds IDES machines need less space comparatively.
“The IDES machines occupy around 30% less space compared to the conventional machines with the same capacity,” Al Amin said while talking to Textile Today.
His study also finds that a 35 tons capacity floor with IDES machines can save about 2283 square feet of space compared to the conventional machines where another two 1600 kg and two 600 kg dyeing machines can be set up easily! And these extra machines can increase the production capacity of the floor by 132 tons!
Al Amin has also compared energy consumption between these machines and finds that where the conventional machines consume 0.19 kWh of energy per kg of fabric the IDES machines consume only 0.16 kWh. With this variation in energy consumption, IDES machines can save early about 1.03 crore taka for a 35-ton capacity floor! With this saving, another stenter machine can be purchased easily!
“As the IDES machines are of lower volume, the surface area is also lower which causes less energy consumption in heating. Also, the absence of a plaiter causes energy saving as it does not require energy to move the plaiter,” Al Amin said.
IDES has agreed to EUROTEX’s proposal to set water and energy flowmeters in the machines so that they can calculate water and energy consumption automatically per batch of dyeing which can be helpful for EUROTEX to continuously monitor and improve in terms of energy and water consumption to be more sustainable in productions.
