Now polyamide fibers can also be recycled with innovative process.
The breakthrough was led by Dr. Tung Pham, head of the Research Institute for Textile Chemistry and Textile Physics based in Innsbruck, Austria. Dr. Tung said, “If we can recover just a part of this as raw material for new fibers, we will already be making a major contribution to the environment.
” Together with his team, he has developed a new method for recycling clothing that contains polyamide fibers.
The textiles having polyamide fibers are not easy to recycle like the other plastics. There are already several successful recycling technologies for separating polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyethylene (PE) from bottles. Even clothing fabrics made from recycled polyethylene terephthalate that is extracted from plastic bottles are available nowadays. These polyamide fibers cannot just separate in a mechanical process.
Mechanical separation is, therefore, out of the question for polyamide fibers.
An organic solvent such as formic acid or cresol could also be used to dissolve the polyamide. However, the processing technology is considered less advantageous because it requires vast amounts of solvent. For the first time, a new method enables the recycling of clothing containing polyamide as part of a circular system.
The recycled polyamide can then be spun into new textile fibers.
Dr. Tung said, “In our method, only the polyamide is dissolved and the wool can easily be separated back into wool fibers. This results in just a minimal reduction of the fiber length. Our approach is to unravel the surrounding structure of wool or cotton by dissolving the polyamide. This improves our chances of being able to separate the loose wool or cotton without causing hardly any damage.”
