By Venkatesh D, Chairman and Managing Director, WTT International
PET waste to Textile fibers
Population growth and industrialization in the world together cause an increase in the amount of waste generated. Especially, the hard to degrade plastic wastes. As long decomposition time of these wastes in the environment causing enormous problems. That being the cause, recycling of these wastes will be the better solution. By implying this strategy, many industries emerged to recycle PET waste into Textile fibers. The quandary effluent On the other hand, the wastewater from these recycling industries again causes complication in the waste water treatment systems. Because, the characteristics of these fibers are non-compatible with the process and equipment of a waste water treatment facility. PET flakes are obtained from PET bottle wastes after a series of procedures such as sorting, washing, grinding, drying, etc. These procedures contribute a bulk number of plastic fibers to the effluent stream of these recycling industries. Handling the effluent of these recycling units is quandary as it contains the plastics in tiny forms.
Ordeal state of ETP
These PET flakes floats as a topping on every treatment system intheplant. It completely covers the system and causes inconvenience in the operation. Disrupt the functions of all the electro mechanical instruments such as sensors, pumps, mechanisms of the process units, etc. This often i n t e r r u p t t h e t r e a t m e n t processes also. Sometimes it creates a terrible scenario in the waste water recycling plant.
Suffocates the filtration system
This micro scale fibers are having the ability to plug into the pores of the filtration media. The pores of the media is the prime factor which correlates the productivity of the filtration process. If these micro fibers get into the filtration system, it collapse the entire process by choking the media. The cleaning and regeneration of the filtration media is a burdensome and cost consuming procedure. This in turn cause a hike in operating cost of the treatment facility or otherwise leads to the earlier replacement of the media.
Necessity to pull out before biological system
When plastic fibers reach the biological treatment system, turn out the complete process into mess. As the plastic fibers are hard to digest through biological activities, brings down the efficiency of the treatment unit. Besides its less biodegradable nature, it creates more trouble in the process by its presence itself. The presence of plastic fiber cause its effects on the activities of wastewater treatment bacteria. This diminish the biological digestion process in the system and upset the treated water quality. To attain the full efficiency of the biological process, the system environment is one of the requirement. But the PET bottle fibers entirely alters the biological environment. Hence these fibers have to be removed prior to the biological treatment.
