A consortium based in Valencia, Spain, has started a textile waste recycling project called Recimap to recover polyester and lactic acid, a monomer to produce polylactic acid (PLA).
Funded by the Valencian Agency for Innovation and led by fashion brand Bespoke Factory Group, the project involves Aimplas, the Spanish Plastics Technology Centre, the University of Valencia, and the Valencia Interior V3 consortium.
Polyester and cotton blends are widely used in the textile industry. At the end of life, this textile waste is often incinerated or landfilled due to its multi-material nature, which makes conventional separation and recycling difficult.
Aimplas has developed a process to transform this waste into high-quality recycled materials and lactic acid. It focusses on the selective separation of cotton and polyester blends through the synthesis and use of ionic liquids.
Ionic liquids are organic salts with melting temperatures below 100 C. They have been shown to have the ability to solubilise polymers used in common plastics such as PET and PLA.
The research team will recycle the polyester fraction using mechanochemical techniques to obtain recycled polyester, whilst the cotton fraction will be used to produce lactic acid through an acid-lactic fermentation process, Aimplas said in a statement.
"The Recimap project represents a significant technical and business innovation by addressing a new recycling approach that not only values complex textile waste, but also generates high quality, high economic value recycled materials,” explained Belén Taroncher, principal investigator of the project at Aimplas. “This includes recycled polyester, with a lower carbon footprint than virgin polyester, and lactic acid, an essential component for PLA production.”
PLA accounts for 27% of bioplastics production worldwide, out of a total of 1.79 million tonnes in 2023. It is the most popular biopolymer for commercial applications and its mostly used in single-use packaging applications.