Circular recycling of polyester and polyurethane blended textile wastes for a non-toxic environment

The current life cycle of textile materials causes significant, unnecessary greenhouse and toxicant pollution. One of the causes of this is the technical challenge of recycling blended textile wastes.

In this project, the polyester and polyurethane (PU) will be chemically separated from a blended waste stream, and then both fractions will be depolymerized into monomers.

The resulting monomers will be regenerated into their virgin polymers and used for textile applications, creating the possibility of closed-loop monomer recycling of this waste.

As an integral part of the project and consistent with the Swedish government’s goal of a non-toxic environment, chemical risk will be evaluated along with other environmental issues such as climate change and eutrophication potential for each step, using LCA.

The prospects for a sustainable recycling process are good because the regeneration process avoids the highly toxic isocyanate compounds since environmentally friendly carbamates will be generated in the depolymerized process which can be used for PU synthesis. LCA will examine the scale of this benefit at what environmental cost it comes.