Search

Waste heat recovery is one of the main strategies to reduce the use of primary resources. This work develops a cascade phase change regenerator to recover energy from exhaust air to fresh air of a natural gas-fired batch dryer in an existing industrial laundry, taken as a case study, where an experimental campaign is conducted. The regenerator comprises two vertical stoves made of horizontal rod bundles in an aligned configuration to mitigate the fouling. The rods are hollow smooth cylinders that are grouped into sectors, each of which is filled with a phase change material properly selected among paraffins. The number of cylinders per row and the cylinder diameter are investigated by a parametric analysis; the number of sectors and the materials filling each sector are optimized by two alternative algorithms, one based on the process physics and the other on a statistical method. At last, an economic analysis is applied to the optimal configuration. This optimal configuration turns to be an 8-sector regenerator that attains an energy recovered of 61.5% and a net annual saving of 3340 €/year and that requires a total cost of about 9500 €, yielding a payback time lower than 3 years.

This study compares the performance of a microfiltration membrane, made by silicon carbide (SiC) and an ultrafiltration membrane, made by zirconia (ZrO2), in the treatment of wastewater from a washing machine designed to clean industrial tents. The filtration of deionized water, containing model microplastics (i.e., nylon fiber), was performed. This was followed by the filtration of real wastewater from a single washing cycle of industrial tents, made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) textile. The filtration parameters of the membranes and physical-chemical parameters of the wastewater, including the concentration of microplastics in the shape of tent fibers (PVC), were calculated before and after filtration. The microfiltration membrane manifested a greater decrease in permeability (95%) compared to the ultrafiltration membrane (37%). The resulting water quality in terms of Total Solids, turbidity, and microplastics concentration was better for the ultrafiltration. This is evident from 99.2% versus 98.55% removal efficiency of microplastics from the laundering wastewater, respectively.

The paper aims at developing an application regarding the use of RFID systems to identify objects present in harsh industrial environments. The structure and properties of passive RFID tags for normal environment and the ways of designing and manufacturing the RFID tags resistant to the aggressive environments are described. The research carried out resulted in the design, development, testing and validation of a RFID tag whose features enabled the implementation of the RFID system in the harsh environment of an industrial laundry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the performance of a microfiltration membrane, made by silicon carbide (SiC) and an ultrafiltration membrane, made by zirconia (ZrO 2 ), in the treatment of wastewater from a washing machine designed to clean industrial tents. The filtration of deionized water, containing model microplastics (i.e., nylon fiber), was performed. This was followed by the filtration of real wastewater from a single washing cycle of industrial tents, made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) textile. The filtration parameters of the membranes and physical-chemical parameters of the wastewater, including the concentration of microplastics in the shape of tent fibers (PVC), were calculated before and after filtration. The microfiltration membrane manifested a greater decrease in permeability (95%) compared to the ultrafiltration membrane (37%). The resulting water quality in terms of Total Solids, turbidity, and microplastics concentration was better for the ultrafiltration. This is evident from 99.2% versus 98.55% removal efficiency of microplastics from the laundering wastewater, respectively.

Introduction: Ensuring the microbiological quality of textiles is an important requirement for health care facilities. The present study examines the way transport times and temperatures influence microbial growth in textiles. Therefore, the effectiveness of washing and disinfection processes has also been studied., Methods: Microbial Challenge Tests were set up through the artificial contamination of different dry and wet textiles which were stored at different temperatures. The bacterial concentration was evaluated in well-defined time phases aimed at simulating the time it took for the textiles to be transported from the hospital facilities to the reconditioning unit. Three times were therefore considered from T = 0 inoculation moment to T = 72 h post inoculation. At the end of each time, the increase in bacterial concentration was assessed by means of microbiological cultures, using selective media for the enumeration of each type of inoculated microorganism., Results: In all the contaminated textiles the bacterial concentration remained unchanged at a temperature of 4 °C, while at 22 °C and 37 °C there was a significant increase (p < 0.05) starting from 8 h of storage. In these textiles, the microorganism that showed the greatest growth capacity was P. aeruginosa with average initial concentration values of 10 4  CFU/cm 2 and a final concentration of 1.5 × 10 5  CFU/cm 2 at 22 °C and 1 × 10 5  CFU/cm 2 at 37 °C 72 h after inoculum., Conclusion: The data highlights the fact that the degree of contamination in textiles does not undergo an increase when transport takes place at a controlled temperature. Refrigerated transport of hospital textiles is thus a desirable preventive measure to keep microbiological risk under control.