Jul 31, 2020

Friday, 31 July 2020 Wastewater treatment has always posed a significant challenge tomanufacturers and fashion brands. Some, like the global sustainabilityinitiative Fashion for Good, see it as an attractive opportunity forinnovation. Together with its Scaling Programme start-up SeaChangeTechnologies, which has developed a game-changing wastewater treatmentsystem, Fashion for Good has initiated a pilot project to assess thefeasibility of the solution at scale. Corporate partners Arvind Limited,Bestseller, C&A and PVH Corp. participated in the pilot and will supportfuture implementation of the technology in the supply chain. “Fashion for Good is committed to finding and supporting the mostdisruptive technologies, such as SeaChange Technologies, to solve keyissues in the fashion value chain. SeaChange has made substantial progressin just over two years as a Scaling Programme participant, culminating inthis pilot, which provides them the momentum needed to further scale theirtechnology,” commented Fashion for Good’s managing director Katrin Ley in apress release published on Thursday. Arvind, Bestseller, C&A and PVH Corp. support Fashion for Good andSeaChange pilot Arvind Limited, a global leader in apparel manufacturing focusing ontextiles, advanced materials, and environmental solutions, provided accessto the company’s effluent treatment plant in Gujarat, India, one theworld’s largest textile manufacturing operations, to conduct a fieldevaluation. The SeaChange system was implemented over a period of threemonths to test and evaluate the feasibility of its widescaleimplementation. “The Fashion for Good Scaling Programme gave us the opportunity to showthe potential of our technology in the field by working with leadingapparel brands,” said Dipak Mahato, founder of SeaChange Technologies. Given that a conventional wastewater treatment process is very complex,SeaChange's technology is able to plug into several existing points of theconventional system. The pilot provided an opportunity to test SeaChange'stechnology in multiple different waste streams such as sludge, dyeingconcentrates and combined effluent, Reverse Osmosis reject and “MotherLiquor”, the liquid concentrate that is left after crystallisation orother similar water treatment processes. According to Fashion for Good, all waste streams were successfullytreated by the SeaChange system and reduced to minerals in a single pass,demonstrating the technical viability of the technology to processwastewater. Sludge was selected as the most viable application forSeaChange, given its hefty environmental impact and cost of disposal. How does the wastewater treatment process work? Specifically, SeaChange Technologies has developed an innovativemechanical system where wastewater or sludge is heated, pressurised andinjected as an aerosol into a cyclonic separator. “This single-step processuses the cyclonic separation technique to draw out unwanted materials,microplastics and other non-biodegradable components from the water itself.Due to the heat and presence of oxygen in the air, these organic compoundsthen undergo thermal oxidisation causing them to degrade to CO2,” explainsthe company. Through near-critical water conditions, where about 5-10 percent of thewater mass becomes ionised, free radicals are created that can destroy mostorganic material. “By using heat from the organic oxidation process, energyuse in maintaining this near-critical environment is incredibly efficient,using only about 60 percent of what would otherwise be required for watervapourisation,” it adds. The process enables the treatment of wastewaterwhile eliminating the production of sludge and mitigating greenhouse gasemissions; the CO2 generated is just a small fraction of the greenhousegasses generated by conventional processes. In view of a typical dyehouse generating 1 to 3 tonnes of sludge per dayfrom wastewater treatment, costs are tremendous considering that sludgedisposal costs over 200,000 US dollars annually. The said amount alsogenerates over 5,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year. “Implementing theSeaChange system into their treatment facility will effectively eliminatesuch costs as well as the associated environmental impacts,” explainsSeaChange. “Effective wastewater treatment remains a big challenge for the textileand apparel industry, finding an efficient solution is crucial for theindustry. C&A is committed to achieve zero discharge of hazardous chemicalsthroughout the supply chain and supporting its suppliers in theircontinuous improvements to achieve it,” confirms Aleix Busquets Gonzalez,head of global sustainability at C&A. In the coming year, SeaChange will be pursuing funding and strategicpartnerships in order to implement the commercial application of theirsystem on a wide scale. While transitioning from a very lean and low coststart-up, the primary challenges facing SeaChange are around growing theteam, gaining funding and establishing the partnerships that they need tosupport commercial launch, which the startup targets for 2021. Partnerships and funding as the way forward “Partnership and innovation are key to finding scalable solutions toindustry challenges. This pilot allowed us to test and further understandsome of the steps needed as we work to completely remove water pollutionfrom wet processors. To drive fashion forward, we cannot stop at simplyreducing our negative impacts; we must work to eliminate them,” confirmsMarissa Pagnani McGowan, senior vice president of corporate responsibilityat PVH Corp. Further, SeaChange needs to raise equity investment - ideally fromstrategic brand partners - and incorporate engineering modifications toaddress pilot trial learnings, such as unified controls with cloud-basedtelemetry and monitoring. Photo & illustrations: Fashion for Good Also read: