In less than ten years, the global population will exceed 8 billion people. The spread of urban areas and consequences of global warming simultaneously decrease the area of arable land.1 Cotton industry will consequently compete for acreage with food and biofuels.2 The creation of a circular economy therefore seems indispensable. Currently, the lack of adequate recycling strategies prevents the usage of worn out textiles as a source of raw material for new value added products.3 Textiles on the market represent almost exclusively multi-component garments with cotton polyester blends being the most prominent mixture, which poses severe challenges onto their recycling due to their inherent heterogeneity.4 Recently developed recycling strategies propose the dissolution of the cellulosic component in N-methylmorpholine N-oxide5,6 or imidazolium derived ionic liquids.7,8 Although these approaches suggest subsequent fiber spinning, they fail to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept. The process presented herein aims to overcome these weaknesses in state-of-the-art methodologies. A superbase-derived ionic liquid dissolves the cotton component selectively without any significant degradation of the residual polyester. After filtration, the cellulose solution is subjected to dry-jet wet spinning to obtain Lyocell-type fibers, while the recovered polyester can be fed back to conventional industrial processes such as melt spinning. The ionic liquid is regained by thin film evaporation.

Novel recycling process for cotton polyester blended waste textiles

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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