In coastal and low-lying vulnerable delta cities, such as theRotterdam Metropolitan region and Metropolitan Manila, there has been anincrease in vulnerability of urban flooding and water quality problems.New approaches address the current and future effects of climate changeand increase urban quality, reduce vulnerability and increase water quality.New arrangements for international cooperation are set up in order toaddress these problems in the project ‘IWASTO’ (‘to correct and toprevent’) where several organisations from the Philippines and TheNetherlands join forces to rehabilitate rivers and introduce newinnovations for water quality monitoring and waste collection using the‘Research Design and Manufacaturing (RDM)’ approach. One of theconcrete results from this RDM approach in 2016 is the development andimplementation of the ‘Longganisa’, a waste collection tool that wasdesigned by a Dutch-Philippine team. In addition, the waterquality wasmeasured and mapped with innovating methods using apps in order tolocate and prioritize highly polluted areas. In the near future measures willbe implemented to rehabilitate the rivers in Manila and a knowledgeexchange forum will be set up to share the best management practices oninternational scale in countries as Indonesia, India and China.
Much research effort is invested in developing enzymatic treatments of textiles by focusing on the performance of enzymes at the laboratory scale. Despite all of this work, upgrading these developments from the laboratory scale to an industrial scale has not been very successful.Nowadays,companies are confronted with rapid developments of markets, logistics, and social and environmental responsibilities. Moreover, these organizations have to supply an ever-increasing amount of information to the authorities, shareholders, lobbyists, and pressure groups. Companies have tried to fulfill all of these demands, but this has often led to the loss of focus on new products and process development. However, both theory and practices of breakthrough innovations have shown that those rightfully proud of previous successes are usually not the ones that led the introduction of new technology, as shown and excellently documented by Christensen [1]. The textile industry is no exception to this observation.With the lack of management impetus for new product and process developments, companies began to reduce investments in these activities.However, this results in a reduction of the size of the company or even closure. Besides the hesitation from the top management of textile companies to focus on new developments,middle management level is also reluctant to evaluate and implement developments in new products and processes. One of the reasons for this reluctance is that many processes in the textile industry are notfully explored or known. From this lack of knowledge, it is easy to explain that there is hesitation for change, since not all consequences of a change in processing or production can be predicted. Often new developments cannot be fully tested and evaluated on the laboratory- or pilot-scale level.This is caused by the impossibility of mimicking industrial-scale production in a laboratory.Additionally, pilot-scale equipment is very expensive and for many companies it is not realistic to invest in this type of equipment. Fortunately an increasing number of textile companies have realized that they have to invest in new products and processes for their future survival and prosperity. New developments are decisive for future successes. If such companies decide to invest in new developments, it is clear that with the scarcity of capital for product and process developments, the chance of failure should be minimized. For successful process and product development, it is necessary to organize the development process with external partners because it is clear that it is almost impossible for individual textile companies to control the process from idea generation to academic research, implementation research, and development and industrial testing. These issues are especially characteristic for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Herein, the collaboration has been organized on two research levels. The first research level is knowledge and know-how based. The universities and chemical suppliers worked closely together to investigate the new process.The aim was to explore the influence of process conditions and interactions of chemicals in sub-process steps as a result of the treatment.The second level is that of the industrial implementation of the new process. The universities and chemical suppliers worked closely together with different industries to implement the newly developed process. The focus in this part of the research was the interaction between the chemistry of the new process, equipment, and fabrics. A co-operation between the beneficiaries of the new process was established.The selection criterion for the co-peration was “who will earn something with the new process”. To answer this question, the value chain has been drawn as the simplified scheme shown in Fig. 1 [2].
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A lot of research effort is put in developing enzymatic treatment of textiles by focusing on the performance of enzymes on lab-scale. Despite all this work upgrading of these developments from lab-scale to industrial scale has not been really successful. Companies are nowadays confronted with rapid developments of markets, logistics and social and environmental responsibilities. Moreover these organizations have to supply an evenincreasing amount of information to the authorities, shareholders, lobbyists and pressure groups. Companies have tried to fulfill all these demands, but this led often to the loss of focus on new product and process development. However, both theory and practices of breakthrough innovations has shown that those rightfully proud on previous successes in the past, are usually not the ones that lead the introduction of new technology, aswas shown and excellently documented by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen [Christenson, 2003]. The textile industry is no exception in this observation. With the lack of management impulses on new product and process developments companies began to reduce the investments in these activities. Finally, however, this will result in a reduction of the size of the company or even closing down. Besides the hesitation from the topmanagement of textile companies to focus on new developments it is also seen that the middle management level is reluctant to evaluate and implement developments in new products and processes. One of the reasons for this reluctance is that many processes in textile industry are not fully explored and known yet. From this lack of knowledge it is easy to explain that there is hesitation for changes, since not all consequences of a change inprocessing or production can be overseen. Often new developments cannot be fully tested and evaluated on labor pilot scale level. This is caused by the impossibility to mimic industrial scale production in a lab. Besides of that, pilot scale equipment is very expensive and for many companies it is not realistic to invest in this type of equipment.Fortunately an increasing number of textile companies realize that they have to invest in new products and processes for their future survival and prosperity. New developments are decisive for future successes. If such companies decide to invest in new developments it is obvious that with the scarcity of capital for product- and process developments, the chance of failures should be minimized. For successful process- and product development it is necessary to organize the development process with external partners, as it is clear that it is almost not possible for individual textile companies to control the process from idea generation, academic research, implementation research and development and industrial testing. These issues are specially characteristic for small and medium sized enterprises (SME’s). In the present work the collaboration has been organized on two research levels. The first research level is knowledge and know-how based. Here the universities and the chemical supplier worked closely together to investigate the new process. The aim was to explore the influence of process conditions and interaction of the chemicals in the sub process steps on the result of the treatment. The second level is that of the industrialimplementation of the new process. Here universities and chemical supplier worked closely together with different industries to implement the newly developed process. The focus in this part of the research was the interaction between the chemistry of the new process, equipment and fabrics.A co-operation between the beneficiaries of the new process has been established. The selection criterion for the co-operation was “who will earn something with the new process”. Paper from the Saxion Research Centre for Design and Technology for Proceedings of IPTB Conference, Milan, Italy, M
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Due to the existing pressure for a more rational use of the water, many public managers and industries have to re-think/adapt their processes towards a more circular approach. Such pressure is even more critical in the Rio Doce region, Minas Gerais, due to the large environmental accident occurred in 2015. Cenibra (pulp mill) is an example of such industries due to the fact that it is situated in the river basin and that it has a water demanding process. The current proposal is meant as an academic and engineering study to propose possible solutions to decrease the total water consumption of the mill and, thus, decrease the total stress on the Rio Doce basin. The work will be divided in three working packages, namely: (i) evaluation (modelling) of the mill process and water balance (ii) application and operation of a pilot scale wastewater treatment plant (iii) analysis of the impacts caused by the improvement of the process. The second work package will also be conducted (in parallel) with a lab scale setup in The Netherlands to allow fast adjustments and broaden evaluation of the setup/process performance. The actions will focus on reducing the mill total water consumption in 20%.
Phosphorus is an essential element for life, whether in the agricultural sector or in the chemical industry to make products such as flame retardants and batteries. Almost all the phosphorus we use are mined from phosphate rocks. Since Europe scarcely has any mine, we therefore depend on imported phosphate, which poses a risk of supply. To that effect, Europe has listed phosphate as one of its main critical raw materials. This creates a need for the search for alternative sources of phosphate such as wastewater, since most of the phosphate we use end up in our wastewater. Additionally, the direct discharge of wastewater with high concentration of phosphorus (typically > 50 ppb phosphorus) creates a range of environmental problems such as eutrophication . In this context, the Dutch start-up company, SusPhos, created a process to produce biobased flame retardants using phosphorus recovered from municipal wastewater. Flame retardants are often used in textiles, furniture, electronics, construction materials, to mention a few. They are important for safety reasons since they can help prevent or spread fires. Currently, almost all the phosphate flame retardants in the market are obtained from phosphate rocks, but SusPhos is changing this paradigm by being the first company to produce phosphate flame retardants from waste. The process developed by SusPhos to upcycle phosphate-rich streams to high-quality flame retardant can be considered to be in the TRL 5. The company seeks to move further to a TRL 7 via building and operating a demo-scale plant in 2021/2022. BioFlame proposes a collaboration between a SME (SusPhos), a ZZP (Willem Schipper Consultancy) and HBO institute group (Water Technology, NHL Stenden) to expand the available expertise and generate the necessary infrastructure to tackle this transition challenge.
