Gahee Kim

The textile industry in South Korea is characterized by excessive water consumption, high concentrations of wastewater, hazardous chemicals, and high energy consumption. This study aimed to analyze Best Available Techniques Reference Documents (BREFs) based on best available techniques (BATs) and BAT-associated emission levels (BAT-AELs) and identify potential solutions for tackling environmental pressure from the South Korean textile industry. Therefore, the existing practices of the textile dyeing and finishing industry in South Korea were compared with those from the BREFs of the European Union. Many existing BATs in South Korea are related to reducing water consumption. There is also a strong focus on BATs for reducing wastewater discharge and achieving energy-saving during treatment rather than after treatment, which differs from other industries. Moreover, BAT-AELs were derived for chemical oxygen demand, suspended solids, and total nitrogen for treating non-biodegradable, highly polluted wastewater. Furthermore, BREFs related to atmospheric pollution included dust generated from the heated fabrics in the finishing process that contained cadmium and phenolic hydrogen chloride from dyes and raw materials in the fabrics. Notably, the European Union has not specified BAT-AELs for the textile industry, whereas South Korea has tailored BAT-AELs for toxic and hazardous chemicals. Thus, numerous green techniques to reduce emissions and energy consumption are being implemented in South Korea.

New approaches and techniques are required for environmental management in workplaces that emit pollutants. The best available techniques (BATs) that are suggested by the integrated environmental permit system (IEPS) play a pivotal role in providing state-of-the-art approaches and techniques to workplaces. For the workplaces that install facilities with the BATs, it is necessary to perform real-time monitoring to determine whether pollutant emission facilities and treatment facilities are operating normally and whether such facilities can maintain the optimal condition during the emission of pollutants. The environmental management measures used before the IEPS had limitations for workplaces that are subjected to integrated environmental management because they consider the entire workplace as a single pollution source by combining all media. In addition, only the emission concentrations and amounts of pollutants were monitored because only the points at which most pollutants are discharged, i.e., stacks for air pollutant emission facilities and final effluent outlets for water pollutant emission facilities, are monitored. These monitoring approaches in a variety of facilities involve considerable costs, and most of them (95% for stacks in workplaces under IEPS, Korea) cannot perform real-time observation even though some of them are capable of it (5% for stacks managed by Tele Monitoring System, TMS). In this study, the applicability of a wireless sensor monitoring network was examined as a new approach for environmental management in workplaces. Based on the sensor monitoring network, surrogate parameters that can indirectly monitor the critical operating factors of pollutant emission and prevention facilities were developed and then measured in real time to examine the status of these facilities. Surrogate parameters can be used instead of directly measuring pollutants as the former has high efficiency, such as cost reduction, and can provide reliable data on the emission characteristics of pollutants. The wireless network is based on an Internet of Things (IoT) platform under real-time conditions in the emission and production facilities in a workplace. This study suggested that a wireless network using the IoT platform improves the BAT assessment methodology to understand the efficiency of environmental pollution reduction and the economic contribution to the workplace.