A Chennai-based company is helping textile mills in Ahmedabad and across Gujarat to manage their effluent. Proklean Technologies Pvt Ltd makes eco-friendly products for industries like textile, leather and paper that otherwise depend on heavy chemicals for a substantial portion of their production process. The products developed by the start-up replace chemical products with those that are biodegradable and non-toxic. The company has developed a proprietary technology platform to achieve this. The technology makes use of probiotic microorganisms (beneficial bacteria) to make its products.
Dr Sivaram Pillai, CEO, Proklean said that in many industries Proklean’s products have helped replace at least 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the chemical products used earlier. It is developing more products and aims to cover as high as 50 per cent of the chemicals used in some industries. “With this, the overall input of chemical in an industry has come down and this has an automatic impact on the effluent being generated,” said Dr Pillai.
Giving an example, he said the first process in any textile industry is washing and cleaning the raw material. “Earlier only chemical products were used to clean this but we have developed cleaning products that are non-toxic and biodegradable and environmentally friendly. This considerably reduces the pollutants being generated from stage one of the production process,” said Dr. Pillai. He said another advantage of the products was that it resulted in saving water up to 20 per cent compared to chemical products and this alone was a substantial saving.
Vishal Karia, Director Pradeep Overseas that is into the textile business and is one of the units that have made use of the company’s new products in their production process said that it has definitely shown results. “Overall, the level of BOD and COD in the effluent has reduced. The pollution is 20 per cent to 30 per cent less than what it is when compared to chemical products,” said Karia. He added that since their unit has a zero discharge process, the use of biodegradable products helps decrease the overall expenditure in recycling the effluent water. It should be noted that Infuse Ventures, the Cleantech fund of IIMA’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) had in 2015 invested `3.5 cr in Proklean Technologies Private Limited.
