Industrial water management and sustainability: Development of SIWP tool for textile industries of Bangladesh

Abstract

In the industrial sector of Bangladesh there is a lack of standardized mechanism to account for water incorporating both efficiency and sustainability. With the growing number of textile industries that rely heavily on groundwater, there is a desperate need for efficient water management at the process level as well as groundwater conservation for safe manufacturing operation. This current study particularly emphasizes on the groundwater withdrawal and use in different units of the wet processing facility of a textile industry. Two years’ operational water use data was utilized to develop “Sustainable Industrial Water Projection (SIWP)” tool for water management for the studied textile which also estimates the potential groundwater volume that can be conserved. Moreover, energy and economic benefits are analyzed through the saving in electricity associated with the pumping cost of groundwater abstraction and softwater production in water treatment plants.