Recycling textile waste through pulp and paper technologies

Abstract

Recovered textile scraps have been successfully converted into a pulp slurry for moulded pulp and papermaking applications. Thus, textile fibres morphology has been investigated at different refining time, from 30 to 120 minutes. Fiber length was reduced from 1.2mm to 0.5mm. In addition, textile refining increased fines fibers proportion from 9.2–24.5% and fibre fibrillation from 3.0–3.7%. Later, sets of handsheets were produced with various refining time. Textile pulp refining increased the resulting sheet mechanical properties. Consequently, burst index was increased from 1.2 to 7.6 kPa.m2/g and the tear index was increased from 6.5 to 21.8mNm2/g. However, after 90min of refining, textile handsheets demonstrated lower mechanical strength due to over refining. Over refining resulted in fibre length reduction and a high fines fibers content. Through refining, it was observed that the dyes on the recovered textiles was leaking. The b* value (blueness) was reduced with refining from − 22.2 to -18.6. Subsequently fixing dyes on fibres with pulp and paper fixatives products were investigated. Thus, white water absorbance at λ = 273 nm was reduced from 0.64 to 0.10 using these agents. The refined pulp was later used to manufacture moulded pulp products to demonstrate a possible industrial application for textile residues recovery.