INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS PAGES
Textile recycling at Research Insti-
tute of Sweden (RISE)
Activities within
From textiles to
dissolving pulp, again
•Mechanical recycling
•Chemical recycling of cellulosics
•Chemical recycling based on depo-
lymerization
•Chemical recycling targeting blends
Recycling of textile blends
The research is built upon an alkaline
process separating the cellulose fibres
and the polyester. The cellulose is re-
cycled into a dissolving pulp (a pulp
optimised for textile production), andsubsequently regenerated into cellu-
lose fibres (viscose, lyocell etc.). The
polyester is depolymerized into its
building blocks: glycol and terephthalic
acid. The building blocks can be fur-
ther used as a recycled feedstock to
create new polyesters or other syn-
thetic materials.•Circular recycling of PES and PU
blended textile wastes.
The possibility to handle both polyes-
ters and cellulosics widens the feed-
stock of used textiles, and the poten-
tial of the innovation.In this project, the polyester (PES) 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 pos-
sibility of closed-loop monomer recy-
cling of this waste
Additional projects in the areaRecycling Chemicals in textiles
•Chemicals affect not only health and
environment….but also precesses.New technologies for dyeing and re-
moving dyes
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