Pollution Research Paper

THERMAL ENERGY CONSERVATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

P. SADASIVAM, N. MOHANDAS GANDHI, S.V. SARAVANAN AND M. VARATHARAJ

Abstract

Textile printing is a term used for applying colours to fabric in different designs and patterns. In textile printing the whole fabric is uniformly dyed and the patterns are well defined. The textile fabric printing forms a part of the textile finishing process. In fabric printing, the designs are applied to the fabric by three methods- roller method, flat screen and rotary screen method. Rotary printing is where images that are to be printed are curved around the cylinder. Any kind of substance can be printed using a rotary printer such as paper, cloth, etc. The rotary printer consists of a tubular screen through which the print paste is forced into the fabric. The rotary printing is most commonly used these days for apparel fabrics. The knitted fabric is mostly printed in the rotary as there is no stress such as stretching and pulling of the fabric should not take place. The existing rotary printing devices are designed to print woven fabric and also knitted fabric. These machines can print the fabric only on one side. Tubular knitted fabric has two layers when flattened. We have to print the fabric one side, dry and again we have to batch and print on another side. But the present machine can print the fabric on both sides simultaneously. The rotary printing device consists of squeezing blades to squeeze out the printing paste and two rotary screen circumferences meeting tangentially and rotating in opposite directions. The edges of the squeezing blades and the tangential contact line of two screens meet in a single line. The fabric is fed from top to bottom at the same speed as that of the peripheral speed of rotary screen. The two screens are connected with two end ring which are connected to gears which in turn is connected to a single shaft. The fabric passes between two screens and the two squeezing blades squeeze the printing paste and the colour penetrates through the screen and gives the desired design. To dry the printing paste on two sides’ single pass through drier will enough. To complete the printing on both sides of the tubular knitted fabric single pass will do. But in conventional machine the fabric has to be dried twice to get the print on both sides. Instead of heating fabric twice it is enough to heat fabric only once to complete print on both sides. The thermal energy required to heat the fabric one time is saved by this machine.