WASTE TEXTILE FIBRE SEPARATION AND REGENERATION VIA IONIC LIQUIDS USING A GREEN CHEMICAL APPROACH

Abstract

The global fashion industry has witnessed a significant growth in production and consumption in recent years, leading to excessive resource usage, a drastic rise in waste textile generation, and associated disposal issues. Efforts have been made to address these challenges by finding sustainable and eco-friendly approaches to prolong garment lifespan and increase material circularity. Unfortunately, the majority of waste textiles still end up in landfills or incineration, polluting the environment. One major hurdle in textile recycling is the lack of effective strategies for separating natural and chemical fibres from blended textiles. The sorting process for different fibre blends could be complex and time-consuming, which hinders the development of blended waste textile recycling. In this project, we aim to develop a green and sustainable chemical strategy for recycling of common multi-component waste textiles, aiming at the target that all components of the waste textiles can be completely recycled without production of any unwanted by-products or contamination during the process. Cotton/polyester and wool/polyester blended fabrics were selected as the samples to be recycled, and two ionic liquids, [BMIM][Cl] and [MMIM][DMP], were chosen as the solvents. The fibre separation of such blended waste textiles was achieved by the dissolution of natural fibres in the selected ionic liquid and subsequent filtration of the mixture, by which the natural polymer-IL solutions and undissolved polyester residues were obtained and recycled respectively via wet spinning and melt spinning process. The fibre-to-fibre recycling of waste acrylic textiles by ILs was also explored for the first time. Using water as the coagulation bath, two fibres, regenerated cellulose fibre and regenerated cellulose/wool keratin composite fibre, were successfully obtained as direct fibre source for textile manufacturing. In particular, the cellulose/wool keratin composite fibres regenerated from [MMIM][DMP] exhibited a unique morphology that have never been reported before, holding potentials for new fibre materials. Our strategy attempts to recycle the waste textiles, and provides a new source of fibres, which can also help to relieve the fossil fuel reserve shortages caused by chemical fibre industries and global food shortages caused by natural fibre production.

Date of Award	1 Aug 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Xiaogang Chen (Supervisor) & Xuqing Liu (Supervisor)