11 - Sustainable polyester and caprolactam fibres

Abstract

The rapid growth of population throughout the world needs more production in every sector to fulfil all the needs. To chase the increase in customer demand, the production speed and acceptance of new technology are the main roadmap in the textile sector. Being the highest and second-highest consumption of synthetic fibre, traditional production of polyester and nylon has a footprint on raw material and takes more time for degradation. But the newly developed biodegradable fibre production technologies give auspicious potential in sustainability. Traditional manufacturing has not been changed to adopt the new technology since the industrial revolution. Hence it gives promises to improve the sustainability of fibre and yarn manufacturing process as well as in wet processing. The wet processing process releases a high amount of effluent due to the huge use of the chemical in the preparatory and dying sector. The energy and water consumption in the wet processing depends upon the type of process used for the production. In the textile supply chain, polyester and caprolactam fibre creates more fibre waste from the unwanted clothes and also from the production process. For the economic growth, and solving the social and environmental issues, the recycling of textile waste can aid and gives more impotence to the new generation. The environmental inference for the recycling method of which can recover polyester and caprolactam fibres by using the fabric waste and different technologies using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This paper studies the process and production technologies of polyester and caprolactam fibre of attaining ecological sustainability over recycling textile wastes.