Effects of cotton textile waste properties on recycled fibre quality

Abstract

The market for recycled cotton appears to be growing; however the main obstacle for cotton recycling is the lower quality of the resultant products. Therefore, detailed investigation of recycled cotton processes from separation/shredding to finishing is of great importance. This contribution reveals the effects of the type of cotton based textile wastes on recycled fibre properties after shredding. For this purpose, pre-consumer knitted cotton textile wastes were collected in a systematic way and sorted according to fabric tightness (loose/single-jersey and tight/interlock) and previous finishing treatments (untreated greige cotton fabrics and dyed cotton fabrics). The effect of the size of the waste fabric pieces fed to shredding was also investigated. Waste ratio of recycled fibres, recycled fibre length, spinnability of recycled cotton fibres and properties of produced yarns were tested. Results showed that lower waste ratio of recycled fibres and higher yarn breaking strength values was obtained by the recycling of cotton fibres from wastes composed of single-jersey greige cotton fabrics. In general recycled cotton fibres from dyed fabrics showed lower quality values. As a conclusion, it was indicated that better values for resultant material could be achieved by the selection of loosely knitted greige cotton fabrics.