Abstract
The demand for textile fibres is growing quickly. However, global cotton production has stabilized around 25 Mton/year. This is a sound development since cotton cultivation causes major sustainable development issues. Even if regenerated cellulose fibre production steadily grows, it is still only from a sixth to a fifth of cotton volumes. Hence, it is essential to find resource-efficient routes to generate alternatives to virgin cotton. There are many promising research initiatives that discover the possibility to utilize waste streams of neat cotton and cotton in fibre blends as raw materials for dissolving pulp for regeneration into, for example, viscose or Lyocell. However, there is a much simpler and energy-efficient route at hand. If fabrics are disintegrated mechanically, the separated fibres can be turned into yarn again. However, since fibre length is a key parameter to accomplish strong and durable textiles, fibre length loss upon tearing should be minimized. This study evaluates how fibre length distribution alters upon tearing of post-consumer cotton waste of two different constructions: denim and single jersey; and different degrees of wear, rendering four different fractions: (1) barely worn denim, (2) rather worn denim, (3) barely worn single-jersey and (4) rather worn single-jersey. Before tearing, the garments were dissembled, their yarns were characterized, fibre length distributions were manually determined for (1)–(4). Length analysis of the recovered fibres after tearing revealed that the length drop was most severe for (a) the finer single-jersey and (b) the barely worn fractions. The findings suggest that significant wear does not exclude from mechanical recycling.
Highlights
IntroductionThe demand for textile fibres is growing rapidly
The demand for textile fibres is growing rapidly. This increased demand is mainly met by synthetic fibres
From a sustainable development point of view, the ceased supply growth is a sound evolvement considering the environmental and social issues associated with cotton cultivation
Summary
The demand for textile fibres is growing rapidly. This increased demand is mainly met by synthetic fibres. The global polyester fibre production was 52 Mton in 2016,1 which was about 60% of the total fibre production and represented a 2.8% annual growth. According to Textile Intelligence,[1] the global cotton supply is projected to reach about 26 Mton during the 2018/2019 season, which has stayed pretty constant the past decade. From a sustainable development point of view, the ceased supply growth is a sound evolvement considering the environmental and social issues associated with cotton cultivation. Cotton possesses very attractive comfort properties that cannot be met by synthetic fibres. There are other cellulose-based natural fibres and regenerated cellulose
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