It's a system that consumes an enormous amount of energy - and that could never be run on solar panels. Around the corner in the dye house, workers are using a different method to color yarn. The raw yarn unspools through a couple of glass-enclosed boxes, through a small steam box, and then into a series of drying chambers. Then, fully colored, it spools back onto a cone at the end of the line. In that first set of boxes, dye is sprayed onto the moving strand of yarn.
Excess dye is captured and constantly recycled.
The steam chamber fixes the dye. Each drying box is not much larger than a microwave oven. A strand of yarn speeds through it at 1,200 feet per minute. At half the cost. And with this system, there is no wastewater or dye going into the sewer.