Valorisation of textile waste via steam gasification in a fluidized bed reactor

Paper in proceeding, 2019

Demand for textile production is constantly increasing together with population expansion and economic development of the society. Reaching the end-of-life, textile products are becoming waste, which is nowadays mostly incinerated and landfilled. Pathways of fibre recycling are known for singlematerial garments i.e. cotton, despite this, several textile products contain a blend of both synthetic and natural fibres which are hard to sort and recycle. Those abounded textile waste fractions can, via feedstock recycling, be converted to high-value chemicals. The principle of the process is to brake polymer chains from the textile to its constituents, which are can be used as chemicals, replacing fossil fuels as feedstock. This paper analyses the potential of feedstock production from steam gasification of textile waste through experimental work in a fluidized bed bench-scale reactor. Additionally, the monomer recovery was studied for textiles with diverse chemical structure: natural polymer typecellulose, synthetic polymer and blends. Results showed that both syngas and aromatics (BTXS) could be recovered from gasification. While cotton is more suitable for syngas production, polyester and blends could produce both syngas and aromatic compounds.