Go big! Scaling up textile fiber processes

As the textile industry accelerates development towards more sustainable production, companies increasingly need support to scale-up their ideas.

"Existing producers and new start-ups around the world are developing innovations and solutions for textile production. At Valmet, we can support these companies with our strong expertise in fiber processing and existing technologies, which are also suitable for textile fiber treatment,” says Tuomo Aho, Director, Research & Technology Development, Stock Preparation and Recycled Fiber, Valmet.

“One of the biggest challenges slowing our customers in this path, whether in fiber-to-fiber textile recycling or cellulose-based textiles, is scaling up their processes from the pilot phase to industrial production so that the process parameters remain the same. At the leading edge of a developing business, each process in the laboratory and the pilot phase is usually unique, so scaling these up to industrial production can present challenges. When you take the leap from the first idea and laboratory tests to continuous production, you can run into all kind of surprises, ranging from suitable equipment materials to heat recovery scaling and raw material quality.”

“Our R&D team understands the challenges that scaling up can cause,” Aho says. “With years of fiber treatment experience with various raw materials in our Fiber Technology Centers, we understand the correlations between our pilot tests and final industrial processes. Valmet’s pilots are designed to match industrial processes, and with this experience, we can interpret the test results and use the information gained for scaling up. In our textile fiber development, we combine our R&D expertise from mechanical and chemical fiber treatments inside Valmet’s different business units and have built a strong team to support our customers.

“Building demo-scale processes and systems is often full of compromises in the materials or technologies used. When you scale up to industrial production, this is the phase where everything must be designed and developed properly. At this point, it is also beneficial to investigate existing technologies, and how they can be utilized to develop the demo system into a full-scale production line. It has been exciting to see how well our current fiber treatment technologies fit with textile fiber processing, and I trust we will see many successful scaling-up processes in the near future,” Aho concludes.