Sustainable Measures for Industrial Laundry Expansion Strategies: SMART LAUNDRY-2015 (SMILES)

Framework: FP7 — Capacities
Programme: Research for the benefit of SMEs
Destination: Research for SME associations
Action type: Research for the benefit of specific groups
Countries involved: France,Croatia,Belgium,France,Germany,Slovenia,Denmark,Belgium,Poland,Belgium,Netherlands,Netherlands,Germany,Netherlands
Call:  (FP7-SME-2007-2, 2007)
Start date: 2008-09-01
End date: 2011-11-30
Duration (months): 39.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3305075.47
EU funding (EUR): 2376000.0
Participants: 16
Project status: CLOSED

The EU-27 industrial laundry sector, with 11.000 establishments (more than 90% SMEs), washes 2,7 billion kg of soiled textiles per year (wet weight) employing 168.000 workers and utilizing 42 million m3 of wash water and 60 PJ of energy per year. It generates similar quantities of waste water, to be treated, and substantial CO2 emissions (3,8 million tons CO2/year). The annual turnover of the sector is 5,1 billion euro, which can be doubled if all disposable textile articles were replaced by environmentally friendly reusable items. Focused and coordinated research to develop and improve innovative technologies can greatly enhance the performance of the sector. The conventional laundry processes are characterized by large enthalpy destructions and resource inefficiencies. It is the purpose of the project to design the SMART LAUNDRY-2015 through research, further development and adaptation of 16 key technologies (combined for green sites or individual for existing plant augmentation). These include water reduction, energy savings, green fuel substitutions for CO2 reductions, new energy systems and improved sequencing of the processes, greater textile hyiene. Full implementation of the SMART LAUNDRY-2015 will reduce the annual water consumptions by at least 10,4 million m3 (30%), the energy consumptions by 27,5 PJ (45%) and the overall CO2 emissions by 2,3 million tons CO2 per year (60% reduction) at 100% market penetration in the year 2015. Improved laundry services with the 16 key technologies and practices will enhance reusable textiles and reduce the throwaways and disposables by 20%. The 16 key technologies will be investigated at pilot scale level and subsequently integrated in a unified design. A parallel benchmarking and innovation monitoring will validate both the actual energy demand and the potential of energy savings of the future innovations. Future economic gains from SMILES are projected at 1020 million EUR in the next 10 years. An important component of project SMILES is the educational effort and training of key staff members and hand-on workers to assist in the introduction of the Smart Laundry-2015. The project also encompasses the writing, production and dissemination of key materials by a special website (smartlaundry2015.com) to national associations and to all SMEs in the sector. Finally the resource reductions are assured by an automated energy management system controlling and monitoring input and output savings. SMILES has 6 WPs: WP1 Water reduction, WP2 Energy/CO2 reduction, WP3 Chemicals reduction, WP4 Quality improvement/Risk analysis, WP5 Integration/Transfer and WP6 Project management. The project has a well-planned management structure for the cooperation between 5 SME-AGs, 2 SMEs and 8 RTDs from 7 EU countries.

Keywords: sustainable technologies,energy savings,water savings,co2 reduction,laundry processing,hygiene