Minimization of Air Consumption and Potential Savings of Textile Denim Fabric Manufacturing Process

One of the most important aspects of Bangladesh’s textile industry is denim. Bangladesh now has a new opportunity thanks to the global demand for denim among fashion industry professionals. Entrepreneurs from Bangladesh provide denim products to well-known international merchants all over the world. The worldwide denim market is predicted to expand by roughly 8% through the year 2020. We must raise the standard of denim if we are to keep up with the expanding industry. In contrast to projectile and rapier systems, air-jet weaving machines nowadays can weave practically all types of yarns without any issues and at higher rates. Due to this, air-jet looms are an excellent substitute for other weft insertion techniques. This kind of device still has one significant flaw, though, and that is the enormous power consumption brought on by the creation of compressed air. Researchers and manufacturers of air-jet looms have therefore worked very hard to find a solution to this issue and achieve a huge reduction in air consumption without compromising loom performance or fabric quality. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to look into ways to decrease air consumption and reduce auxiliary selvedge waste without any decrease in loom performance and fabric quality on existing air-jet weaving looms which reduce the manufacturing costs with process improvement. Just updating the air pressure allowed a weaving mill to reduce air usage by 11 cfm. So, with just almost no cost, a company with 100 looms could save $0.15 M each year, on compressed air. Two new methods for decreasing process costs on air jet looms have also been developed by this project work.

Optimization of Finishing Process and Energy Savings in Denim Textile Facility

Denim is widely accepted among exported textile products due to its aesthetics, appearance, and fashion. Practitioners employed several physical or chemical treatments to improve denim qualities in denim finishing operations. So, several treatment processes, including enzymatic, bleaching, singeing, heat set, and ozone finish, are used, which made this processing more energy consumption and time-consuming. Therefore, it is significant to investigate how changing the chemicals and raw ingredients could improve the finishing process, which is environmentally and economically beneficial for sustainable production practices in the denim finishing process. This study’s research design comprises an experimental investigation in a denim plant in Bangladesh. Two different fabrics were chosen to analyze, determining the potential savings of finishing on the denim fabrics’ performance characteristics. By deducting singeing and heat-set processes, the researchers ran an experimental process by maintaining the same length of fabric. Then, the impacts of finishing process optimization on the mechanical, thermal, and comfort parameters of drape, stiffness, and tear strength were examined. The study’s findings demonstrated that this experiment increased productivity and reduced the finishing unit’s energy consumption without compromising the denim fabrics’ quality. This study significantly impacts environmental sustainability by preserving limited energy resources and manufacturing denim finishing processes.

Morphological, Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Hill Forest Soils at Chittagong University, Bangladesh

Forty five soil samples were collected from the four pedons of the hill areas at Chittagong University based on the depth of soil horizon. Soil profiles on hill top were relatively well developed and belonged to Ultisols according to USDA soil Taxonomy. The profiles at the piedmont were relatively young soils and classified as Inceptisols and Entisols. The soils of all profiles were characterized by coarse texture (38% to 73%, sand fraction), high bulk density (1.15 to 1.32 Mg·m-3), low organic-C content (0.26% to 1.73%), acid soil reaction ( varied from 4.44 to 5.52 and pHKCl from 3.57 to 4.90). Soils in all pedons were poor in exchangeable bases and base saturation. The CEC values ranged from 9.12 cmolc·kg-1 to 14.5 cmolc·kg-1 while ECEC varied from 1.96 to 4.78 cmolc·kg-1. The exchangeable Al (aluminum) concentration ranged from 0.41 to 0.66 cmolc·kg-1. Exchangeable acidity level ranged from 0.74 to 1.25 cmolc·kg-1. Exchangeable Al and aluminum saturation increased with depth and their concentrations were below the toxic range for tree stands. The study revealed that more young soils formed on the piedmont sites had somewhat better properties as compared to matured hill top soils. The variation in physico-chemical properties of the soils seemed to be influenced by the topography to a greater extent in the studied area.