Deven Supercriticals is an innovation driven engineering company dedicated to state-of-the-art Supercritical Fluid (SCF) processing technology, leading for more than 2 decades. The company offers tailor-made Pilot to Commercial scale plants and undertake turnkey projects for various Supercritical Fluid Processing applications including Sustainable Textile Dyeing and Finishing.
Interview with Dr. Swapneshu Baser, Managing Director at Deven Supercriticals.
Easy Engineering: A brief description of the company and its activities.
Swapneshu Baser: Deven Supercriticals is an innovation driven engineering company dedicated to state-of-the-art Supercritical Fluid (SCF) processing technology, leading for more than 2 decades. We offer tailor-made Pilot to Commercial scale plants and undertake turnkey projects for various Supercritical Fluid Processing applications including Sustainable Textile Dyeing and Finishing.
SUPRAUNO™, developed by Deven Supercriticals is an internationally patented (USA Patent no. US11015289B2, Indian Patent no. 298213) waterless dyeing and finishing technology that uses supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of water as a medium for dyeing, delivering significant reduction in not only energy and water but also hazardous chemicals and for the first time in the world achieves waterless dyeing across a diverse array of man-made and natural textiles using conventional dyes and their traditional trichrome recipes. Thus, SUPRAUNO™ is truly versatile and eliminates the need for expensive special dyes or pigments for dyeing of textiles.
E.E: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
S.B: The main area of activity for the company is the development of alternate, sustainable, green technology and equipment for the reduction of environmental impacts caused by conventional textile dyeing and finishing processes used in the world.
The conventional textile dyeing industry is known for its significant environmental footprint due to the heavy consumption of water, energy, and hazardous chemicals. This leads to the generation of large quantities of wastewater containing toxic substances that irreversibly contaminate the rivers, other water bodies and soil, making it a major concern. Global garment production is ever increasing and has surpassed 100 billion items manufactured per year. Also, the overall global garment and textile industry uses ~5 trillion liters of water worldwide and discharges over 8000 synthetic chemicals, many of which are carcinogenic (cancer causing) into water bodies annually. This has prompted stringent environmental regulations and compliances being enforced along with legal requirements for declaring the ESG compliances by the industry, which has increased the pressure on textile dyeing & finishing facilities to adopt more sustainable and eco-friendly practices.
Hence, there is an urgent need for replacing the conventional water-based dyeing and finishing techniques by a sustainable solution that truly minimizes the environmental impact. This solution must reduce the use of hazardous chemicals along with minimizing the water and energy usage while being versatile, efficient, and cost-effective.
While there are several sustainable dyeing startups that are emerging to solve this problem, most have limitations such as being suitable mainly for synthetics like polyester, requiring special and expensive dyes or using pigments with binders to dye the textiles.
This is where SUPRAUNO™ comes in. SUPRAUNO™ is an internationally patented sustainable waterless dyeing and finishing technology using supercritical carbon dioxide in place of water and eliminating major limitations of prior-art sustainable dyeing solutions.
SUPRAUNO™, for the first time in the world, allows the waterless use of conventional dyes & their traditional tri-chrome recipes in the sustainable dyeing operation of various man-made and natural fabric types, including Cotton, Polyester, Nylon, Viscose, Linen, Wool, Acrylic and their blends with the help of supercritical CO2. This also improves efficiency, reproducibility of dyed shade, washing fastness & finishing effects.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
S.B: Our SUPRAUNO™ technology addresses and solves the major limitations of the prior-art carbon dioxide based dyeing solutions existing in the market, making dyeing and finishing using supercritical CO2 truly simple, versatile, and viable for the textile industry to adopt.
Moreover, the prior-art technologies cannot use conventional tri-chrome recipes but need the use of special and expensive dyes for the dyeing of each shade as they require the pre-dissolution of the dyes in supercritical CO2 as their first step. To address this limitation, SUPRAUNO™ incorporates an innovative step of pre-coating of a thin, uniform & controlled layer of dyes on the entire surface of the textile as per the depth of the shade which allows it to then use the conventional dyes and their tri-chrome recipe for dyeing and eliminates the need for special and expensive dyes. This also substantially increases the effective surface area of the dyes and thus, increases their interaction with supercritical carbon dioxide used during the dyeing operation, achieving uniform, efficient penetration & dyeing all over the textile surface. This inventive step opens the door to the waterless dyeing of many synthetic and natural textiles using conventional dyes and their traditional trichrome recipes.
SUPRAUNO™ further requires no reduction clearing for polyester, uses no salt for cotton, improves overall dye utilization, allows single bath dyeing of textile blends with up to 95% lesser auxiliary chemicals which otherwise would have ended up in the wastewater. Thus, it substantially reduces the Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD), Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) load, lowering batch times leading to overall ~67% lesser Energy Load as compared to conventional exhaust/soft flow dyeing process.
Learn more about SUPRAUNO™ by watching our explainer video on YouTube link here:
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
S.B: The global consumption of clothing has increased multiple folds in the past few decades attributing to the advent of fast fashion brands. The number of clothes that an average consumer purchases has increased by 60% in the last 20 years and is expected to further increase in the coming years. Additionally, the life of a garment has been cut down by half. These changes in the recent past have had an adverse effect on the environment with clothes getting dumped in landfills, wastewater containing carcinogenic chemicals from dyeing getting dumped into rivers etc.
Our sustainable dyeing and finishing technology, SUPRAUNO™, substantially reduces all three aspects towards green engineering: reduces overall energy load, reduces water usage, and lowers the use of hazardous chemicals to reduce all types of pollution. The lower batch times due to highly efficient process leads to lesser energy load. Further, it uses up to 95% lesser auxiliary chemicals and overall uses ~76% lesser water, both of which otherwise would have ended up in the wastewater, thus substantially reducing Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) Energy load (Substantial energy is required for Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) system to evaporate the water coming from the R.O. system. Thus, reducing the Energy consumption by about 67% as compared to the conventional Exhaust / Jet dyeing and finishing plant. In essence, SUPRAUNO™ is not just a technological leap, but a giant leap towards sustainability. It’s a win-win, ensuring a cleaner, greener, and more eco-conscious future for all of us.