Industrial green development (IGD) is a critical response to the over-consumption of natural resources and pollution caused by modern industry. Innovation-driven IGD has generated great interest in recent years. However, relatively less attention has been paid to the various aspects of IGD and the moderating role of regional factors, including the developmental stage of IGD, government-scale, and enterprise scale. The present study was conducted to fill these research gaps using panel data across 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2015. The empirical results show that 1) innovation does promote IGD and is most effective in low-carbon production, followed by resource reduction, economic operation, and pollution abatement; 2) there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the regional IGD level and the role of innovation in IGD; and 3) both government-scale and enterprise-scale contribute to the innovation-driven IGD. These findings provide new insights into the impact of innovation on IGD and may shed light on future decisions related to green development. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

All-green textile sizes with satisfactory weaving performance and biodegradability were developed from soy protein and glycerol, two major byproducts from soy-based biodiesel production. Polyvinyl alcohol has long dominated textile sizing chemical market due to its excellent sizing performance, despite its non-biodegradability. Efforts have been devoted to replace polyvinyl alcohol for a more sustainable textile industry. Recently, substitute size developed from soy protein after using high amount of petro-based triethanolamine showed acceptable sizing properties. However, triethanolamine was not an ecofriendly additive, due to its petroleum origin and non-biodegradability. In this research, glycerol was used to plasticize soy protein to develop all-green soy size. Glycerol interrupted hydrogen bonds in the soy globulin, allowing them to extend in the films. Resultantly, the soy size films possessed high stretchability and work of rupture. Lab-scale experiments and industrial weaving proved that the all green soy size had similar or better weaving performance and remarkably better degradability, comparing to polyvinyl alcohol and triethanolamine plasticized soy protein size. For the first time, a possible logarithmic relationship was found between work of rupture of the size film and relative weaving efficiency. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We developed a clean reactive dyeing system for industrialization by controlled demulsification of the dyeing medium containing cottonseed oil. Low dye fixation and high pollution are the major problems of conventional aqueous reactive dyeing. Current alternative dyeing technologies have their deficiencies such as undesired dyeing quality and toxic discharges. Semi-stable emulsion dyeing could achieve high levelness and fixation of dyes by adjusting the demulsification speed of dyeing medium and water content in the system on a pilot scale. Compared to aqueous dyeing, up to 47% dyes could be saved to obtain the same shade in semi-stable emulsion dyeing. Dyeing levelness of emulsion dyeing has no significant difference from that of aqueous dyeing. Dye discharge using the semi-stable emulsion system was reduced by 90%. Discharges of salt and dispersing agents were eliminated. More than 99.8% of cottonseed oil could be recycled. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A reactive dyeing system is designed based on controllable chemical potential difference between the external and internal phases for minimal discharge of pollutants. Conventional aqueous reactive dyeing is widely used for cotton, generating large quantities of wastewater containing high concentrations of hydrolyzed dyes and salts. Although new reactive dyeing technologies have been developed to reduce pollutant discharge, they all failed due to release of toxic organic solvents or high costs. In the newly developed dual-liquid-phase system, spent cooking oil is served as external phase to disperse reactive dyes, while water is served as internal phase to swell cotton and fix dyes with alkali. 100% of reactive dyes move into the internal phase without the help of salts due to high chemical potential of dyes in the external phase. Compared to conventional aqueous system, the dual-liquid-phase system improves dye fixation by 33% and reduces discharge of dyes by 82% when the initial input of dyes is 3% owf. Discharge of salts is reduced by 100%. The external phase is reusable and biodegradable. Cotton fabrics were dyed with the dual-liquid-phase system on a pilot scale and achieved the same dyeing quality as those from conventional aqueous system. The dual-liquid-phase system also consumes less materials and energy than conventional aqueous system, indicating economic feasibility. The dual-liquid-phase system could be applied to current dyeing equipment, enabling quick implementation of lab results into real production. Clean large-scale reactive dyeing could be achieved with the dual-phase-liquid system. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In the context of severe water shortage and pollution, enhancing the green total-factor productivity of water resources (GTFPWR) is critical for the green development of water resources. This study aims to propose a novel two-stage analytical framework, in which the GTFPWR is measured in the first stage and its economic-related determinants are examined in the second stage. In this two-stage analytical framework, we improve and integrate four classical methods, namely, the undesirable-super-slack-based measure, global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index, system generalized method of moments and fixed-effects panel threshold models. The proposed analytical framework is capable of addressing four practical issues simultaneously: equal efficiency, undesirable outputs, impact scenarios and endogenous biases. We can thus more accurately and comprehensively evaluate the GTFPWR and its determinants. To validate the applicability and suitability of the proposed methodology, we collected the panel data about water resources across 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2015 for an empirical study. The main findings of this study are as follows: i) the level of water utilization is a critical factor for the government to decide whether to increase the GTFPWR via foreign direct investment and trade; ii) the amount of wastewater should be effectively reduced to mitigate the conflicts between urbanization and the GTFPWR growth; iii) inland provinces, particularly Shanxi, Hainan and Yunnan, need to improve water technologies and management to increase their low-GTFPWR-growth rates. Our analytical framework is practical to evaluate water-use productivity and its determinants, while our empirical findings provide new insights into the green development of water resources and may shed light on future policies of environmental management. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.