Elsevier

Energy

Volume 159, 15 September 2018, Pages 74-85
Energy

Energy consumption and energy saving potential in clothing industry

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.06.128Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Steam boiler, compressor and lighting have considerable share in energy consumption.

  • Specific energy consumption was found to be between 0.78 and 1.44 MJ/piece.

  • 5.4–30.3% of energy saving potential was assessed for knitted garment production.

  • Energy efficient lighting application has the highest energy saving potential.

  • Specific CO2 emission was calculated to be 0.09–0.17 kgCO2/piece.

Abstract

Turkish clothing industry, being one of the biggest apparel suppliers of the world, plays a major role in manufacturing sector of the country with the highest share in total exports. Therefore analysis of the clothing sector in terms of energy consumption which is an important component of its environmental impacts is of importance. Energy consumption of the plants in the entire knitted garment production chain was aimed to be investigated in this study. Average, specific and equipment-wise energy consumptions were analysed. Energy saving potential was revealed by walkthrough energy audits. Moreover, average and specific CO2 emissions were calculated. Specific energy consumption and CO2 emission for the production of one piece of knitted garment from dyed-finished fabric was found as between 0.78 and 1.44 MJ/piece and 0.09–0.17 kgCO2/piece, respectively. Equipment-wise energy use investigation of apparel production plants showed that the steam production, compressors and lighting equipments have considerable share in total energy consumption and cost. Average energy saving potential of 16.4% for apparel, 14.4% for embroidery and 11.6% for screen printing plants were indicated to be possible. Application of energy efficient lighting equipment was found to have the highest energy saving potential corresponding to 63% of the total projected savings.

Introduction

Clothing industry is among the largest sectors of the Turkish economy. Ready-made clothing industry's share in total exports of Turkey was 11.9% in 2016. Taking into account the textile exports, the total share rises to 17.4%, making the textile and clothing industry the largest exporting sector of the country [1]. It is the 7th biggest apparel supplier of the world with a share of 3.8% and the 3rd biggest apparel supplier in the European Union market after China and Bangladesh [2,3]. Clothing industry of Turkey is mainly made up of small sized companies [4]. Furthermore, according to Social Security Institution statistics [5], companies employing from 1 to 19 people accounts for %80 of the total workplaces. Total workplace number was reported to be 32228, which ranked 3rd in the manufacturing sector in terms of workplaces number, and the number of issued employees to be nearly 470000.

Being such a large sector, Turkish clothing industry has also fragmented and heterogeneous mode of operation, as in textile industry. Various types of plants such as apparel production, embroidery, screen printing, piece washing/dyeing mills are working based on mutual interaction for the production of garments. Therefore clothing industry has environmental impacts at certain levels along its entire value chain due to the use of raw materials and energy, as well as waste production and emissions. Dominating of the industry by just-in-time and fast fashion [6] is also believed to amplify the increase in environmental effects. Today, clean production practices are at the front in order to provide sustainable production by reducing environmental impacts. In example, some apparel brands are using Higg Index [7] tool to measure environmental performances of their apparel products [8]. In doing so, they expect their suppliers within all production chain to achieve certain performance criteria. In this respect, the investigation of clothing industry in terms of energy consumption and energy based emissions which are the important components of environmental impacts is of interest.

There are various studies on energy consumption and energy efficiency of textile plants including man-made fibre production, spinning, knitting, weaving and textile finishing [[9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]]. However, investigation of clothing industry in terms of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions are quite limited. This could be due to the relatively lower energy use in garment production. However investigation of clothing industry in terms of energy consumption was thought to be worthy of examination, since the clothing industry comprises a large number of plants in countries such as Turkey where textile production is intensive. Here, energy consumption related articles in which clothing plants were incorporated were discussed. Palamutcu [18] has investigated the electric energy consumption in various textile plants such as spinning, warp sizing, weaving, finishing and apparel production. Actual and estimated specific electric energy consumptions were reported. Actual specific energy consumption of the apparel plant has been found as 0.065–0.195 kWh/kg. Apparel production plant has been reported to show the highest deviation ratio between actual and estimated specific electric energy use, which was remarked to be arisen due to the use of weight based production quantity which differs depending on the product models and characteristics. In the study of Herva et al. [19], energy and material flow analysis and ecological footprint methodologies have been applied to an apparel plant producing jackets. Cutting process has been found as the most energy intensive stage. Gas-oil has been identified as the most important source of pollution and its substitution has been advised for cleaner sources. It was deduced from the paper that the specific electric energy use was between 0.45 and 0.61 kWh/piece for jacket production. Jananthant et al. [20] have investigated the energy consumption and breakdown of energy use in apparel plants in Sri-Lanka. The air conditioner has been found to be the major energy consumer (46%) followed by lighting (20%). 15–30% of energy saving potential has been reported for the plants in the region surveyed. Butnariu and Avasilcai [21] have presented a case study on the calculation of ecological footprint of an apparel plant. It has been indicated that the value of the footprint was influenced by the type of fabrics used in manufacturing process. Godiawala et al. [22] have investigated the use of daylight instead of artificial lighting in apparel industry. They have pointed out that energy consumption of lighting has a significant share in total energy consumption of apparel plants and use of sunlight have a potential of 10% reduction in the total electric energy consumption. In the study of Kong et al. [23], application of energy saving measures such as the use of energy efficient lighting, the use of direct drive sewing machinery and the recovery of steam condensate have been investigated for apparel plants.

The major objective of this study was to investigate energy consumption and energy saving potential of different type of plants in clothing production chain. In total of 16 plants were analysed. The energy consumption, energy cost and specific energy use were reported in terms of energy type used. By a walkthrough energy audit, energy saving potentials were discussed. Additionally, the CO2 emissions of each plant were calculated. The specific energy consumption and the specific CO2 emission to produce one piece of knitted garment from dyed-finished fabrics were revealed.

Section snippets

Methodology

Energy consumption and CO2 emissions of apparel production, embroidery and screen printing plants were investigated. For this purpose, 10 apparel production, 3 embroidery and 3 screen printing plants located in 6 different cities of Turkey were analysed as shown in Table 1. These plants work as sub-contractors of various international brands and produce knitted garments from dyed-finished knitted fabrics.

General work-flow patterns of each type of plants with energy inputs were given in Fig. 1,

Energy consumption

Electric energy is the main energy used in apparel production for production machines, compressors, steam generators, lighting and space heating. Besides, depending on the region, some plants use natural gas or coal for space heating. Although electric steam generators are common in the apparel industry, the use of natural gas for steam production is also encountered. Monthly average energy consumption of the analysed apparel production plants were given in Table 2 depending on the energy

Conclusions

Companies operating in the Turkish clothing industry in the production chain of knitted garment manufacturing was investigated in terms of energy consumption and energy saving potential for the first time in this study. In this context, 16 plants were examined in the research, including apparel production, embroidery and screen-printing operations. The main conclusions drawn from the results of the present study are listed as follows:

  • -

    Monthly average energy consumption of apparel production,

Acknowledgement

Author would like to acknowledge Üniteks Textile, Turkey for facilitating the coordination of this work.

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