Today's KNOWLEDGE Share : Avantium Develops Solution to Effectively Recycle Polycotton Textile Waste

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

New research leads to viable solution for polycotton textile waste recycling

In a paper published in Nature Communications, researchers at the Industrial Sustainable Chemistry group of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) present a solution to the challenging problem of recycling polycotton textile waste.

The process, developed in cooperation with the company Avantium, starts with fully removing all cotton from the fabric using superconcentrated hydrochloric acid at room temperature. The cotton is converted into glucose, which can be used as a feedstock for biobased products such as renewable plastics. The remaining polyester fibers can be reprocessed using available polyester recycling methods.

Being able to recover glucose from the cotton in textile waste is a crucial contribution to this, as glucose is a key bio-based feedstock. Currently, it is produced from starch from corn and wheat. If and when we will be producing plastics from biomass on a large scale, the world will need a lot of non-food glucose.

Scalability and cost-effectiveness:

The paper describes how Leenders performed experiments using Avantium's pilot plant for its proprietary Dawn Technology which was originally developed to convert non-food plant-based feedstock (e.g wood) into glucose and lignin. Its key feature is using highly concentrated hydrochloric acid (43% by weight) at room temperature.

Leenders tested batches of actual post-consumer polycotton waste textiles in Avantium's Dawn pilot plant. It turned out the cotton cellulose could be fully hydrolyzed into glucose under industrially relevant conditions. The polyester part of the fabric remained intact and could be easily separated. The trials demonstrated high glucose yields, indicating scalability and cost-effectiveness.

The cotton-derived glucose from the process can be used in a wide range of industrial applications, including polymers, resins and solvents. It can, for example, be used by Avantium to produce its lead product 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), a crucial component in the production of the biobased PEF polyester (polyethylene furanoate) that offers a renewable alternative to PET bottles.

The process also enables the complete recycling of polyester from polycotton. It can be chemically recycled to form new virgin polyester, as was established by tests performed by CuRe.

Favorable techno-economic analysis:

According to Gruter, the research lays the foundation for actual industrialscale recycling of polycotton textiles and the first commercial availability of non-food glucose.

Many parties are trying to get either of these things done but no one has succeeded yet.Our techno-economic analysis looks rather favorable and Avantium has already invested substantially in this development.

source:Avantium/ phys.org