Unitop: Caustic recovery plant for mercerizing machines

ideal for profitable working of textile dyeing and finishing mill

Dyeing Printing Finishing

Unitop Aquacare have been active in textile industry since last 38 years and have brought many innovations in the field of
Evaporation Engineering and Heat Recovery Systems with more than 170 evaporation plants world wide.
According to Andreas Mondry,
Advisor for International Sales and
Marketing of Unitop, Our efforts are
always to make the plant highly energy
efficient and with discharge of Low pH
Effluent. We offer customized Caustic
Recovery Plants to suit the individual
requirement and one can also select the
equipment from our standardized range to
optimize plant design with respect to consumption of steam, power, water and
guarantee excellent yields without degeneration of quality.

containing various impurities. If drained to

effluent treatment plant, it creates substantial loss of caustic soda and also severe
problems in meeting the environmental
standards. Caustic Recovery Plant concentrates wash liquor and allows recycling of
Caustic Soda Lye to mercerizing machine
and also recovers water for reuse, therefore, the caustic recovery plants contribute
to the profitable running of the finishing
mill.

The company reports lowest steam

consumption due to their unique steam
saving innovation, which improves the
steam economy to as high as 6.5 kg
evapn/kg of steam. This is possible as
Unitop offers a provision of optimum
number of stages, multi-stage condensate
flashing system, feed pre-heating system
and when needed thermo compressor
(TVR). The steam consumption is 20% 30% lower than other manufacturers.

How caustic is recovered?

Unitop Aquacare customers are mostly

from India and other countries such as Sri
Lanka, Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia
and Saudi Arabia. References from India
include Empire Dyeing, Bombay Dyeing,
Coats, GTN, K G Denim, Morarjee,
Raymond, Premier, Ramkumar, Hanung,
Amaravathi, Centuri, Mandhana.

Weak liquor containing caustic at low

concentration is heated to its boiling point
with the help of heat source like steam,
thermic oil or even waste heat. The boiling
liquid is flashed at lower pressure / temperature and the vapors so generated are
re used in the next stage. By repeating this
process in multiple stages, water from
weak liquor is evaporated to achieve product with caustic concentration at 250 to
350 gpl and in case of dry cloth merceriser
at 400 - 450 gpl in case of wet cloth merceriser. The final concentration is selected
to eliminate the possibility of excess weak
lye overflow.

The condensate quality is improved by

means of demisters provided in flash vessels to ensure good quality of condensate
with pH in the range of 7 - 8, resulting in
minimum loss of caustic through condensate and complies with pollution control
standard.

Mondry adds, These orders are not

repeated just once, twice but even thrice We get totally involved with the customer
and this is reflected in our efforts. For
example, we have specially designed
computer based operators training programs and we also undertake annual
maintenance / operation and maintenance
contracts.
Need of caustic recovery
Mercerizing plants in textile mills are
used to mercerize desized / scoured /
bleached / dyed yarn / knitted fabrics.
Depending on the design of Mercerizing
machine, they generate substantial quantity of diluted caustic liquor - wash liquor
of concentration of about 20 - 60 gpl,

Unitop caustic recovery

Unitop Aquacare offers Caustic
Recovery Plant technology, and depending on the process conditions, they design
proper circuitry to deal with corrosion conditions.
Unitop designs tailor made systems to
suit individual customers needs and the
local conditions like fuel prices, quality of
water and even the space constraints.

Another important feature is flexility in

plant design. The plant can generate hot
water at such temperature, that all of the
heat is utilized. Whereas, generation of
hot water can recover the cost of steam
supplied to evaporation plant, making
caustic recovery virtually free. In case, hot
water generated cannot be consumed,
Unitop has another option, where
Adiabatic Evaporator utilises the exhaust
vapor from the last stage, which reduces
steam consumption significantly.
The proper selection of pumps to
maintain high pumping efficiency results in
moderate power consumption. Similarly,
as moving parts of the plant are only
pumps, the maintenance costs are merely
2-3% of the total project cost.
Furthermore, plants are compact, with low
head room requirement. All operations can
be performed from ground level and thus
plant can be fitted inside or above the processing house.
Last, but not the least, the entire plant
operation is automated and hence the
plant can be monitored and controlled by
a single person. Unitop also offers
advanced plants equipped with level, density, pH controllers along with safety modules and PLC controlled operations with
DAS/SCADA and also trouble shooting
modules - another first from UNITOP.

Block diagram: Caustic recovery plant.

46 PTJ October 2010

At the forthcoming IGATEX exhibition

in Lahore the visitors can contact Nazer &
Company or meet Andreas Mondry,
Advisor for International Sales and
Marketing of Unitop to obtain further
information regarding Unitop caustic
recovery plants.