Recycling of textile residue via gasification

Research Project, 2018 –

A demand for textile production is constantly increasing together with population expansion and economic development of the society. Reaching the end of the life, textile products are becoming waste, which is nowadays mostly incinerated and landfilled. Those abounded textile waste fractions can, via recycling processes, be converted to chemicals which are further used for the production of new textiles. The principle of the process is to brake polymer chains from the textile to its constituents, monomers and syngas, which are then used as chemicals in the synthesis processes. This project focuses on gasification of end of life textiles to produce a feedstock for new fibers, replacing fossil fuels as feedstock.

Today pathways for chemical recycling of the fibres from the textiles are known for cotton and polyester. However, some textile products contain a blend of several different synthetically produced fibre types which are hard to separate. How to deal with these blends, and even turning them into useful chemicals, is a big challenge.

This project aims at gaining knowledge about the potential of textile waste recycling via gasification. Considering the temperature range of interest that is used in a gasification process, a risk of favoring unwanted side reactions forming PAH is apparent. Based on current understanding from gasification of wood, alkali salts can prevent cyclisation and thus formation of heavy aromatic species and their effect on the product yield from textile fuels will be investigated.