Objective
This proposal is prepared with the help of an Exploratory Award, which included a Research Feasibility Study (annexe 1). Toxic organic solvents and caustic soda are commonly used as cleaning agents in silk screen printing industry in order to eliminate colour rests left on the printing screens after the printing process. This elimination of colours has to be by 100 % to guaranty a good printing result for further printing by reused screens. All silk screen printers (12,000 Enterprises in the EU) are concerned. They have to reduce production costs because of competition situation to offset printing industry (4,000 enterprises concerned) Only a cooperative research project will be successful to obtain this objective because concerned enterprises are too small (5 20 employees) to lead such a trig enterprise alone. Since concerned enterprises are in competing situation between themselves on the national market, the project is necessary European. The aim of this work is to protect polyester fibres against physiochemical attack, which are used as printing support in silk screen printing industry. An innovative coating process will be developed covering silk fibres by a protecting film This film will avoid the adhesion of colours on the silk and suppress aggressive cleaning agents (toxic solvents and caustic soda) The use of toxic agents is suppressed (1 of solvent and 250 g of soda per printing series) and the lifetime of the tissues extended (2 times). No suitable process has been identified in literature treating similar problems (Research Feasibility Study, annexe 1). The project will increase safety (handling of toxic chemicals) of this job and will diminish health damage of concerned personal (12 % of the personal staff is concerned). The reduction of tissue damage by use and accidents due to more ergonomic working conditions is estimated around 60 % of a total amount of 480 destroyed screens per enterprise. The cleaning plant will increase the productivity of concerned enterprises by 24 man months/year. A major problem to solve is the thickness of the film (about 1 to 2 m), which should be low enough to coat only defections of the fibres and not the pores of the silk tissue and should be homogeneously distributed on the entire printing screen (2 x 2 m). In fact, silk pores (diameter of 20 m)are used for the printing process. A new silk cleaning process is developed in order to recycle water and other chemical agents (2,000 enterprises concerned in Europe). The new cleaning process based on ultrasonic treatment will be less expansive in use, and since the use of chemical agents3 is reduced, less pollutant and dangerous for the health of exposed workmen. Silk tissues will be cleaned in one step (one ultrasonic bath) instead of two automatic and one handwork procedures today. The liquid will be recycled in parallel to the cleaning process. Hazardous wastes will be concentrated and eliminated. The process will be offered to European silk screen printing SMEs and therefore significantly reduce toxic agents. The studied process should be adapted to small sized SMEs, simple coating, easy to handle. The new process evaluated during phase 1 of CRAFT will allow reducing production costs of 10 % and will increase printing quality. Costs will mainly be reduced by economising chemical products and rinsing water by 66 %. A subsequent economy of around 2 % of turnover will be realised by saving costs of water treatment. Because printing results will be better, less printing trash will be produced ( 3 % of paper and ink). The end users and the ultrasonic manufacturer have the capacities to exploit the results of the project. This project falls under the areas 1 production technologies and 2 Materials and technologies for product innovation of BRITE EURAM III program. It concerns more particularly areas 1.2 development of clean production technologies and 2. l Materials engineering .
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology materials engineering colors
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics productivity
- engineering and technology materials engineering coating and films
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Coordinator
31000 Toulouse
France
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