Tirupur is an important place in Coimbatore District in Tamil Nadu State, South India. Tirupur is reputed in the manufacture of Banians (Knit Wear) and it stands first in India. Banian Industry has developed to such extend that it exports to many foreign countries. Tirupur has gained universal recognition as the leading source of Knitted garments,Casual garments and Sportswear.Tirupur is an industrial town.Many lakhs of workers are employed in ginning, spinning and knitting factories and thier ancillary units. And the only city in India which gives more than Rs.250,000,000 Foreign Revenue per year. Tirupur is also known as Dollar City, Knit City, Cotton City and mainly " Hosiery Centre ".

THE EYE FOUNDATION at Tirupur

The new premise of the Tirupur branch, “The Eye Foundation and Thirumurthy Nethralaya” spread over 50,000 square feet is an ultra modern facility with all the latest in Ophthalmic care. This 5 storied building has good Out-patient and In-patient facilities with a well equipped Laboratory to carry out thorough investigations. In trend with the latest advances, THE EYE FOUNDATION at Tirupur covers the whole gamut in Ophthalmology with focus on patient comforts, with proper ambience and appropriate delivery systems. To name a few, the latest Lasik treatment, Lasers for Retinal Diseases, Ocular Imaging, Field Analysers, Operating Microscopes, Phacoemulsification and vitrectomy units are all available at the new center. Under the able guidance of Dr. D. Ramamurthy, Medical Director, The Eye foundation, headed by Dr. J. Ravi, Sr. Consultant, the new hospital functions with Six highly trained, dedicated ophthalmologists supported by a team of optometrists, nursing, paramedical and administrative staff.

The new building was inaugurated on Thursday, the 9th August, 2007 at 5.30 p.m. Shri. N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chairman& Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited was present as the chief guest and the meeting was presided over by Dr. S.S. Badrinath, Emeritus Chairman, Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai. Shri. A. Sakthivel, President, Tirupur Exporters Association was the guest of Honour.

Coimbatore , Aug. 2

THE Madras High Court's permission to allow 490-odd dyeing/bleaching units in Tirupur to resume work on their complying with the Court ruling on part payment for installing `zero effluent discharge' equipment may have brought a breather for the dyeing industry.

At the same time, it has also pushed the dyers into the situation where they have to hunt for finance and suitable technology needed to handle the 100 million litres a day of effluent discharged by them.

The conservative estimate of cost (being made within the Tirupur dyeing industry) for putting up a workable model of reverse osmosis (RO) technology to achieve the `salt removal/zero discharge' stage comes to Rs 4-4.5 crore for a unit handling 10 lakh litres of effluent a day.

This translates into a total of Rs 450-500 crore to process the 100 million litres of trade effluents released by the Tirupur wet-processing units, besides the running cost or the operation and maintenance costs to be incurred by them on the RO plants.

Where will this money come from for an industry, which, till date, has considered any investment into treatment of effluents as one-way traffic on which there is `nil' return?

This seems to be the biggest dilemma that haunts most dyeing units, which also seem to remain unconvinced on the durability of the technology to handle the high volume of textile effluents with them.

"Whether technology is available or not, we need to implement the `zero' discharge and we have little time to ponder these as we have social obligation and to oblige the Court right now. This is despite the fact that we still have our own doubts on how foolproof the RO technology is. Yet we think we can go ahead and evolve the system through trial and error method," said Mr Kandasamy, President of the Dyers Association of Tirupur (DAT).

But are the fears of the Tirupur dyers on trying the RO technology borne out of their worry on the high cost of technology or finding the required money, more than its long-term viability?

The technology providers who are eyeing intensely on the evolving environmental angle in Tirupur wet-processing industry in the light of the recent Court initiatives, however, assert that there are technologies to treat much worse industrial effluents.

"We have at least five or six proven technologies to handle any type of industrial effluents, including the textile effluents. But the issue is that they all come at a cost," said Dr S. Sundaramurthy, Director (Technical), Creative Environment Consultants, Chennai.

Dr Sundaramurthy, whose firm has signed up an RO project execution for dyeing units coming under three common effluent treatment plant (CETP) companies in Tirupur, added that besides the capital cost for setting up the RO plants, the cost for the operation and maintenance of these plants are linked to the type of automation chosen by the promoters.

Some major environmental engineering companies operating at the national level are paying attention to Tirupur now.

These companies used to be wary in the past on taking up any effluent treatment projects at individual dyeing unit level, fearing that the unit may not be inclined to pursue the project till the final stages on cost consideration.

According to industry sources, the entry of Tamilnadu Water Investment Company Ltd (TWICL) has been instrumental in these companies looking at Tirupur again.

TWICL has expressed willingness to become a nodal agency for implementing viable effluent treatment solution for the Tirupur dyeing and bleaching industry cluster.

It has already tied up with 10 of the 18 CETP companies in Tirupur through MoUs to scout the technology as well as finance to implement the secondary and tertiary effluent treatment systems, which will include the RO plants as well.

TWICL is currently involved in finalising a feasibility report for the RO projects for these 10 CETP companies, comprising about 330 dyeing and bleaching units.

It is likely to come out with a detailed project report within a month.

In the meantime, the pollution control board officials in Tirupur are awaiting the High Court order to effect the restarting of the 493 units whose electricity disconnection would be revoked on the basis of the latest Court order.

With these units restoration, the number of units that are yet to be permitted by the Court for restarting operations stands at 92.

G. Gurumurthy

The direct contact evaporation technique increases the heating efficiency or the fuel value up to 85 per cent.





Coimbatore , Sept. 27

WITH handling of textile effluents still remaining a hot topic in the region, an environmental engineering consultancy group from Tirupur has come out with a technology solution that seeks to treat the spent dye (dye bath), the core pollutant in wet textile processing, using hot gas.

The consultancy group Neelakantaa Pollution Preventers (NPP) of Tirupur, headed by an NRI chemical engineer Mr S.R. Ramaswamy, says its technology targets the spent dye bath, through "the direct contact evaporation process" that eliminates collection of sludge from the effluent treatment cycle itself.

The spent dye bath accounts for 70 per cent of the pollutants in textile effluents.

(This is in contrast to the existing practice of removing the colour from the effluents using nano filtration and separating salt/dyestuffs and pure water from dye-bath using the reverse osmosis system. The higher wear and tear of the membrane encountered by the users of the reverse osmosis for treating the dye-bath is considered a deterrent in managing the hosiery effluent.)

The direct contact evaporation technique, according to Mr Ramaswamy, envisages use of hot gas generated at 800-1000 degree Celsius against the mass of spent dye bath or the left-over concentrated dye solution that comes out as reject after the completion of the dyeing process.

The spent dye solution comprising the residual dye-stuffs, salt (sodium chloride or the common salt) and soda rejects, when left untreated becomes sludge and thereby poses disposal problems.

A good portion of this cold spend dye bath when it comes into direct contact with the hot gas gets evaporated leaving the rest of the wastes such as the salt, soda and dye chemical to crystalise into a coloured salt slurry.

This slurry is then centrifuged and sent to a roaster to burn off the coloured chemicals stuck with the salt residues. This de-dyed crude salt is further treated with hydrochloric acid to neutralise its soda content and converted into pure salt using a crystalliser.

The main advantage of this technique, according to Mr Ramaswamy, is that the gas required for burning the spent dye bath into steam could be generated by using the same fuel the dyeing units would use for the heating the boiler. The direct contact evaporation technique increases the heating efficiency or the fuel value up to 85 per cent. . This way, it paves way for total elimination of the textile sludge in effluents and at the same time ensuring the `0' discharge by allowing 100 per cent recovery of water and salt.

As for the cost for setting up direct contact evaporation treatment plant, the environmental consultancy group says that the initial investment cost would work out to Rs 300 per litre of dye bath and a plant to handle 10,000 litre capacity of dye bath would be Rs 30-40 lakh. However, Mr Ramaswamy is of the view that investment cost would come down with higher capacity. The cost for a plant to treat one lakh litre of dye-bath per day is estimated to come down to Rs 100 per litre or Rs 1 crore for the project.

The NPP has commissioned a pilot plant to treat 10,000 litre dye-bath per day at a private dyeing house in Sultanpet near Tirupur, which according to the NPP members performed well.

Ms Vasundhra Devi, Director, of NPP, says that the cost of investment made for the plant could be recovered in six years.