A new scientific project enables the complete recycling of polyester from polycotton which can be chemically recycled to form new virgin polyester and lays the foundation for actual industrial-scale recycling of polycotton textiles and the first commercial availability of non-food glucose.
THE PROCESS: The process starts with fully removing all cotton from the fabric using super-concentrated 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.
- 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.
- The remaining polyester fibres can be reprocessed using available polyester recycling methods.
- Testing of batches of actual post-consumer polycotton waste textiles at Avantium's Dawn pilot plant revealed that 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 TEAM: This solution to the challenging problem of recycling polycotton textile waste has been developed in cooperation with the company Avantium.
- The research was published in Nature Communications by researchers at the Industrial Sustainable Chemistry group of the University of Amsterdam (UvA).
- The research was led by Prof Gert-Jan Gruter, who heads the Industrial Sustainable Chemistry group at the UvA's Van't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS) as a part time professor. Gruter is Chief Technology Officer at Avantium where he leads the development of renewable and circular polymer materials and technologies that are key to transforming our fossil-based economy into a renewable, bio-based economy.
Gruter's Ph.D. student Nienke Leenders, first author of the paper, performed many tests under the four-year MiWaTex project and is now about halfway.
- The project entails cooperation with textile sorting and recycling company Wieland, workwear producer Groenendijk Bedrijfskleding, Modint, the trade association for the Dutch clothing and textile industry, and CuRe, developer of advanced technology for chemical recycling of polyester.
WHAT THEY SAID:
Our techno-economic analysis looks rather favorable and Avantium has already invested substantially in this development. Our ambition is to advance this technology to the next phase of commercialization, together with partners. So we might very well be the first to market non-food glucose obtained through a bio-refinery approach.
— Prof Gert-Jan Gruter
Head / Industrial Sustainable Chemistry group
Van't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences (HIMS)
