FTN Environmental & Engineering Meeting at Initial Lokeren; CO2 cleaning for firefighting tunics, Logistics & Smart Laundry

Tuesday, June 27th, the first FTN theme meeting Environment and Technology of 2017 took place at Initial in Lokeren, Belgium.

 

New Chairman

During the program, the projects of 2017 were central. Results of completed projects were presented and new projects announced. In addition to participants in the platform, Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (National service for Enterprising Netherlands) was also represented. In his very first appearance as Chairman of the FTN Environment & Technology Platform, Mr. Rudolf Vendrig warmly welcomed the attendants.

 

Results

The results of the Energy Efficiency Plans were presented. The industry has an ambition of 13.4%, well above the required 8%. A big boost is sustainable energy in which a lot of investments are made. In addition, there was an update on electrical and hybrid logistics by Robert Goevaers and Leon Wennekes.

 

Future

Because IT, Internet, Big Data and Robotization have taken a huge flight over the past few years, the Case Study ‘Smart Laundry’; The Laundry of the Future ‘ was presented by Koen van Hees during the meeting. This brochure explains the concept of Industry 4.0 and Big Data and offers a glimpse into the possibilities of the future. In association with Eindhoven University of Technology, TKT sets up a community that will focus on digitizing and using Big Data to develop cases for industry and state-of-the-art information and knowledge exchange.

 

Projects

Ongoing projects, such as Energy Saving Open-end Washing Machine and Textile Recycling, have started this year and show a promising continuation. By the end of 2017, the project aimed at technical and economic opportunities to realize further water and energy savings in open-end washing machines should be ready. In addition, the composition and amount of the textile waste stream of textile service companies have been mapped out, and hereafter the technical and economic possibilities for recycling textile waste from the textile service industry will be investigated.

 

Tour Initial

During the meeting at Intial in Lokeren, the attendants went on a guided tour through the laundry and got explanations about the innovative CO₂ cleaning machine that the company uses to clean firefighter tunics. Under high pressure liquid CO₂ is used as a detergent, together with other detergents. The liquid CO₂ is a good carrier of dirt and CO₂ breaks self-contained oily materials. Textiles that come from the CO₂ cleaner do not have to be dried, because liquid CO₂ changes in gas and is recirculated.