Big spinning, dyeing, washing and weaving mills are using new heat recovery technologies to capture and reuse waste heat energy from gas burners that run the factories. As per Daily Star, mills in Bangladesh are capturing this waste heat energy to boil water and run air conditioning and other purposes for which they can save both energy and money. The waste heat recovery system offers textile industries an economic and green solution to save valuable energy.

According to the program led by International Finance Corporation (PACT), the system reuses waste energy from industrial processes instead of dissipating it into the environment. The recovered heat can be used for onsite power and steam generation and preheat combustion air. Over 335 factories are using the waste recovery systems, which has reduced annual gas consumption by to 1,274,983 cubic metres from 1,291,122 cubic metres, says PACT.

Wherever the industry uses captive power units, steam can be additionally generated for various other uses, such as for chillers, dyeing and availing hot water, which would have otherwise required consuming additional gas, he said.

The overall gas consumption in such industries attains efficiencies of 81 per cent to 86 per cent. Where combined cycle power plants are run, the efficiency is higher, at 47 per cent to 52 per cent, said A Matin Chowdhuy, Managing Director, Malek Spinning Mills. Chowdhury said he has been making savings capturing waste heat energy from gas usage in his three units including Knit Asia, Salek Textile and JM Fabrics at Shafipur in Gazipur. He produces 50 tonne of fabrics a day to produce garment items at Knit Asia.