Textile industry counts on INEGI to digitalize production and reduce water consumption

A new project is about to kick-off that brings together technology and sustainability experts from across the country to respond to the challenges faced by textile improvement companies in terms of intensive water consumption. It is called GIATEX and is one of the 23 innovation agendas, supported by the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), which has the contribution of INEGI.

The textile industry consumes enormous amounts of water, an increasingly scarce natural resource, with high associated energy costs, and which results in the production of large volumes of contaminated wastewater.

To combat the problem, 27 entities have come together in this consortium, including companies, technology and innovation centers and local administration. Their main objective is to create strategies to reduce specific water consumption – through the use of less intensive ennobling technologies and the adoption of treatment technologies that allow the reuse of water – along with mechanisms to support better decisions on the final destination to be given to water. water - through the integration of process monitoring and control systems and a new tool to support water management.

INEGI's team, in particular, will provide the textile production process with «intelligence». How? The team plans to develop and integrate sensing systems throughout the textile refinement process to monitor water parameters and automatically control its stages. Subsequently, it will develop an intelligent incentive and decision support algorithm/tool for water rationalization.

As Domingos Moreira, responsible for the project at INEGI, explains, "digitilization is fundamental for rationalizing water consumption in the textile industry, as it allows water resources management based on accurate data obtained in real time.”

The project «GIATEX: Intelligent Water Management at ITV» is led by Estamparia Têxtil Adalberto and is financed by the European Union through Next Generation EU and the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), within the scope of the operational Capitalization and Business Innovation program .