Speaker
Description
Recycling of textiles is a major challenge because textiles, whether home or industrial, often consist of two or more materials that form an almost inseparable mixture during the manufacturing process. In the project Tex2Mat, two groups of textiles were investigated.
One group was a cotton-polyester blend for home textiles, the second group was a blend of polyamides (PA 6.6 and PA 6) of industrial textiles.
For the cotton-PET blend, a separation process based on an enzymatic process was developed. The resulting pure PET was to be prepared in such a way that it could be reused in the spinning process and recycled for its original purpose. To this end, the reprocessed PET fibers were systematically analyzed to determine the extent to which the material properties had changed as a result of processing and usage compared to virgin material. Based on these findings, the material was recondensed (solid state polymerization, SSP) to a level from which it can be spun and woven again. Tests on laboratory equipment confirmed that the material could be re-spun. The produced fibers were twisted into threads and the yarn were used to weave towels, the original product.
The polyamide mixture, which was originally used in industrial textiles, was tested for its suitability as material for technical injection molded components and analyzed for any signs of degradation. The material property requirements for spinning differ significantly from those for injection molding, but tests nevertheless demonstrated that the recycled material can be processed well.
In addition, tests were carried out with various impact modifiers in order to optimize the material for use in technical injection molded parts.
Subsequently, technical components with different recycled content were manufactured at project partners and tested according to the specifications. The components met the specifications in all respects.
| Speaker Country | Austria |
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