How much fuel does heat recovery from the hot water drained after dyeing save in a Panipat unit?
Recovering heat from hot dye water saves 5 to 7% of fuel in the Panipat survey by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), with a payback of up to 8 months. The water leaves the machine at 90 to 95 degrees Celsius and a heat exchanger can pass its heat to fresh water.
The heat going down the drain
Dyeing needs the water at about 90 to 130 degrees Celsius, depending on fabric and colour. When the batch ends, the hot water, called liquor, is drained at 90 to 95 degrees Celsius. TERI says a few plants recycle the water for cleaning. The table lists no reuse of its heat.
A heat exchanger is a set of thin metal plates or tubes with hot water on one side and cold water on the other. Heat crosses the metal, the two waters never mix. It works like a radiator in reverse: the drain water warms the fresh water.
What the survey table prints
- Existing: hot liquor at 90 to 95 degrees Celsius, no reuse.
- Proposed: recovery through a heat exchanger, giving hot water of up to 65 degrees Celsius, with boiler efficiency of 85%.
- Energy saving potential: 5 to 7%. Simple payback: up to 8 months.
- TERI says the recovered water can make the hot water for the next batch, where steam is injected indirectly, or serve as boiler feed water.
A note on the machines
TERI names tankie and cabinet dyeing machines as the main kinds in the cluster, with a few jet machines. It says cabinet machines work with low liquor ratios to reduce thermal energy use, water and chemicals. Liquor ratio is the weight of water for each kilogram of material dyed. Less water to heat means less to drain, and so less heat to recover. The survey gives no figure for the difference.
How it sits with our Surat page
Our Surat page works a heat exchanger that cools 90 degree jet machine drain to 50 degrees. It is a separate report from a separate cluster, so its payback does not carry over. Both agree that the drain is a real source of heat to recover.
Example: a unit burning 30 tonnes of pet coke a month
- Saving at 5%: 30 × 0.05 = 1.5 tonnes a month
- Saving at 7%: 30 × 0.07 = 2.1 tonnes a month
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) at 3.17 tonnes for each tonne of pet coke: 1.5 × 3.17 = 4.8 and 2.1 × 3.17 = 6.7 tonnes a month
- A year: 18 to 25.2 tonnes of pet coke, 57.1 to 79.9 tonnes of CO2
Example only. Pet coke is a hard black fuel left over from refining oil, counted here at defaults from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); a wood-fired unit uses the same percentages on its wood tonnes. Check the saving on your own batch temperatures and fuel records.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so the tonnes of fuel bought each month are on file to set against any saving you expect. It does not read a boiler or heater itself, so the before and after fuel records still have to come from your own invoices.
- Green loan readiness check
- Surat drain heat recovery reports compared
- Heat recovery from hot drained dyeing water
- Panipat fuels and carbon
Sources: TERI, Energy Profile: Panipat Textile Cluster, 2016 (SAMEEEKSHA), IPCC, 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Volume 2, Energy
Last reviewed 2026-11-07. Figures are from the Panipat survey of 2014-15, published in 2016. The survey table prints each saving as a range with no boiler size, fuel tonnes or equipment cost. Check a current quote and your own fuel records before you rely on any payback.