Textile industry in South India Growing opportunities for Cleaning Industry

In the textile manufacture, the constantly flowing dust, fly and fluff can damage the product, leading to rejection of the entire export consignment. Thus, be it in the sorting of the natural fibre, i.e. cotton, or in keeping the surrounding area in the unit clean, for quality product and production, cleanliness is inevitable.

“Right from the first cleaning process with the opening of the cotton taken up in the blow room and chording area, to the process of stringing and making of the yarn, cleaning is an on-going process,” explained R Varatharajan, Sr General Manager, Super Sales India Ltd, Jay Textiles Unit-II, Coimbatore.

In the production of textile, the dust and trash generated in the various processes are either cleared through suction systems or through blowing. While, blowing is definitely not advisable, some of the suction systems are inbuilt with the production machinery. There is also a lot of external cleaning done with the help of vacuum cleaners. Obtaining raw cotton with seeds, separating of the trash in the ginning mill, removing of further trash from the lint and the production of the yarn… are all processes before the actual textile is manufactured. Primarily consisting of preparatory, spinning and weaving sections, cleaning, both manual and mechanised is required at all stages.

“Some of the major areas that require cleaning are the preparatory / Comber area where the micro dust consisting of short fibre is more. While most of the dust particles get absorbed through the suction system in-built in the production system, there are smaller dust particles that settle on the machine surfaces and need to be removed using an external vacuum cleaning machine. Normally, cotton has a tendency of honeydew contamination which settles on various parts of the machines or beside them. These surfaces are cleaned manually using soft brushes, waste cloth of hosiery material and also microfibre (VXL),” added Varatharajan.

No doubt cleaning equipment will have a bright future in the textile industry – R. Varatharajan

“While there are options of installing centralised vacuum cleaners, it becomes expensive as the operating costs or energy consumption in a centralised vacuum is much higher. But we are planning to install one in the future.

“Instead, we have installed external overhead travelling clearance made by LG equipment. The electro jet let equipped with a blowing and suction motor is installed on the machine which does continuous cleaning. All the micro dust sucked through this system is collected through trenches in the collection area down below.”

Jay Textiles which has four units has about 60 to 70 such machines operating in this one unit. Approximately covering an area of about 60000sqft, in the existing unit, it has three Roots Multiclean Ltd vacuum cleaners operating eight hours every day. Even though the unit is operational 24/7, the cleaning requirement is only during 8am and 5pm. “A separate team of operators take care of the cleaning. We also have domestic vacuum cleaners from Eureka Forbes and industrial machines. All these machines are of varied capacity in keeping with the dust accumulation in a particular area. If the bag capacity is more, the operator’s workload decreases, especially in the blow room, chording and comber areas,” Varatharajan said.

Most of the textile manufacturers and dyeing units in Tamil Nadu are attached to the Southern India Mills’ Association (SIMA) which has around 450 members. Since the product quality is directly related to maintaining cleanliness, SIMA monitors certain other norms and regulations of social responsibility, factory inspection and employment. Selvaraju, Secretary-General of SIMA said, “SIMA conducts only social audits like audits for employment. There is already an established body for environment certification, like the ISO:14000, which ensures that the certified textile units abide by all environment norms and regulations. We also have government bodies like pollution control boards which monitors the pollution levels and other environment related issue.”

Shopfloor maintenance

“Textile manufacturing has grown and today modern textiles mills are fully automated resulting in highest quality products manufactured in huge volumes. In textile mills, one of the factors that influence quality and productivity is good housekeeping which mainly involves keeping the shop floor and machines dust free. Controlling of the dust like fly and fluff in a textile mill is a challenging task,” said Balathandayutham, Manager – Product training, Roots Multiclean Ltd.

Preparatory Department

Everything related to textiles begins in the Preparatory Department where cotton bales are opened and fed into the blow room machines. The cotton goes through different rollers so that the vegetable matter and dust materials are thoroughly removed. Clean cotton is then fed into the carding machine. Carding machine segregates the cotton and converts them as slivers. The cotton passes through the flats, cylinder, doffers, lickerin, redirection rolls, crusher rolls, crude rollers and delivery calender rolls. During this process the dust settles in these rollers and a good cotton sliver comes out. These deposited dust need to be routinely removed.

The ribbon lab machine consists of the drafting zone rollers, doffing zone and creel zone. The dust deposited here during the conversion of sliver into ribbon needs to be cleaned. This is a vital process and thus, removal of dust on regular basis is mandatory.

The cleaning requirement of the preparatory department include:

• Routine sweeping to remove the fine dust and fluff material
• Vacuuming of the processing machines cotton contact roller / zones to remove dust, fibre and waste materials
• Cobweb / Roof / side wall dusting

All the above mentioned processes are dry cleaning processes and no wet cleaning is involved.

Coimbatore based Gangothri textiles and KPR mills employ Roots TTS wide area V-Sweepers for sweeping floors made of fine concrete and stone fashioned. The cotton dust, stones and sand particles are effectively swept. These mills also use Curved brush with 11-metre telescopic pole for effective removal of cobweb and deposited dust.

An effective vacuuming system absorbs dust, fly and fluff. Roots Delfin AS30 vacuum is being used at LMW group Super Sales India Limited mill. “The cotton dust is sucked during the cleaning process and collected into a nylon bag which can be disposed off regularly. The blower is fitted in the lowest part of the vacuum unit. The hopper is specially designed in such a way that the fluff and dust deposits evenly at the bottom. This facilitates optimum utilisation of the hopper and results in continuous and longer operations hours,” explained Balathandayutham.”

Spinning Department

The machines here thin and twist the roving fibre creating a continuous yarn which is winded into a bobbin. The consistency in the size of the yarn is a vital parameter. Fine fluff originates during this process and continuously deposits on the surface and surrounding. KPR textiles, uses the Wide area V-sweeper and one metre Eze mop to sweep the dust regularly.

Weaving Department

The power-loom machine weaves the cloth, using the warp and wept yarn. This shop floor needs scrubbing periodically. The storch used in the sizing process along with the cotton fibre makes the shop floor dirty. C.R Mills of Somanur uses auto scrubber to effectively scrub the weaving section.

Summer India Textiles, a leading textile company, Uses a Hakomatic B750R ride on scrubber to maintain their weaving section. This machine scrubs floors and removes dirt, muck and storch efficiently in the winding, warping, sizing, drawing and power-loom areas.

Regular maintenance

Other than production area, the areas where cleaning is required can be divided majorly into following areas include the following:

Outdoor Cleaning

Jaganath textiles, KG denim and Lakshmi mills, leading textile companies have vast approach roads. These roads are heavily trafficked and have trees on both sides. They use road sweepers to maintain these roads.

Dry leaves, sand particles, dust and stone materials gets collected during sweeping. “These machines manage outdoor dust which ultimately results in enhanced end product quality. Finished goods, being a very critical part, should be free from any kind of dust and 10-20% of the dust comes from outside areas,” said Puneet Mishra, General Manager, Forbes Pro, Eureka Forbes Ltd has been using Forbes PRO – CTS ride on sweepers like CS 60 & CS 80 with effective results.

Administration Areas

Daily cleaning is equally important and mainly involves floor cleaning. “Machines like Vispa 35 E/B, Abila E/B & FP 551 E/B, of Forbes PRO – CTS is an ideal range for any small/big textile Industry,” he said. Glass cleaning is also required to maintain a clean and hygienic environment. There is a range of glass cleaning professional tools that facilitate and ease the process of glass cleaning

Food Courts/canteens

“This is one area which requires high level of hygiene. Floor cleaning machines like FP 551 E/B are ideal for food courts. Depending on the area, one can go for Ride-On scrubber driers too. For maintenance cleaning, single disc machines can also be deployed in food courts,” said Puneet.

Open Drains

Bad odour is not the only culprit from open drains but poses a serious threat to people working in the factory premises and the hygiene levels of the place. These drains should be regularly cleaned with the help of high pressure cleaners. Both cold & hot water high pressure cleaners can curb this problem.

The above mentioned equipment ultimately lead to

• Smooth & faster production system
• Maintaining uniform quality level
• Reduction in maintenance cost
• Increased cleaning efficiency and productivity