Development of new treatment methods for multi material textile waste

The EU's new circular economy directive presents a substantial challenge for the polymer processing industry, in the course of which this study has been initialized. The aim is to upcycle textile waste from various sources and to produce textiles again or technical parts from the recycled material with a high demand on mechanical and thermodynamic properties. In this study several textile waste streams were examined. There were two waste streams from home textiles (towels, bed sheets, etc) and one waste stream from industrial textiles (sieves and felts for paper and cement industry). The home textiles are a blend of ∼50 wt.% polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-fibre and ∼50 wt.% cotton fibre. One central task of this study was to develop an enzymatic process to break down the cotton fibres and to retrieve the pure PET-fibres. In the following steps the gained PET fibres will be spun again to fibres and woven into towels, as in the original application. Additionally, the textiles will be tested according to oecotex. The second waste stream, three different polyamide (PA) and PA blends were tested for their suitability for injection moulding and spinning. These materials will be tested for selected products which have to comply with very high standards and are partially used in safety-critical applications.