PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Textile production, distribution and use operates in an almost entirely linear fashion, with few opportunities for reuse or recycling. This, coupled with the concept of fast fashion, has led to significant amounts of textile waste accumulating in landfills and large quantities being incinerated.
In 2020, the global textile industry was responsible for 92 million tonnes of waste, representing between 3% and 10% of the EU's environmental impact. At the same time, the industry consumed approximately 93 billion m3 of water, generated 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, and released around 1 million tonnes of microfibres into the sea.
Synthetic fibres currently account for 64% of the global fibre production, with polyester dominating the market at 54%. However, less than 50% of discarded clothing is collected for potential reuse or recycling, despite recycling technologies currently available across Europe. And a mere 1% of synthetic textile waste undergoes recycling processes to be transformed into new clothing. However, an increasing number of clothing brands are transitioning to use recycled versions of synthetic fibres, mainly polyester. The typical recycled alternative for virgin synthetic polyester fibres is polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, the most widely used type of plastic bottles, produced in vast quantities every year. To truly establish circular economies in the textile industry, there is a growing imperative to convert textile waste back into new textiles.
OBJECTIVES
The main objective of the LIFE POLITEX project is to reduce and eliminate the amount of polyester (PES) textiles that are currently sent to landfill or incinerated. It will achieve this by implementing new recycling methodologies for the polyester polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and processes to depolymerise PES textiles into their basic constituents or monomers (BHET). These BHET will be used as secondary raw material for obtaining new recycled PES filament yarns that can be used to create recycled PET (r-PET) textiles.
The proposed solution will be developed based on 2 prototypes:
- innovative technologies for polyester sorting and classification at textile waste management facilities in the region of Barcelona, in Spain
- a chemical processes to depolymerise agglomerated textile waste to produce high quality BHET, and repolymerisation to produce r-PET at a production site in San Giorgio di Nogaro, in Italy
The specific objectives of the project are to:
- design and implement an automatic process capable of sorting and pre-treating up to 4 500 tonnes/year of textile waste, reaching 10 000 tonnes/year at full capacity after the project
- separate textile waste into 48 outputs by the end of the project, and evaluate up to 100 composition categories, increasing the sorting and pretreatment capacity from 230 kg/h to 460 kg/h
- avoid the downcycling, landfilling and incineration of 1 755 tonnes/year of textile waste, reducing landfilling stress in the area by 1.2%
- implement a novel pre-industrial scale PET chemical recycling process with a treatment capacity of 550 tonnes/year (expandable to 10 000 tonnes/year) on-site
- obtain 50 tonnes of BHET with a purity suitable for reuse within the textile value chain
- obtain an overall glycolysis process yield of more than 90% using heterogeneous catalysts
- spin 50 tonnes r-PET resin into technical yarns for their reintroduction into the textile value chain and their validation by final textile producers that have shown interest in the project
- reintroduce chemically recycled polyester yarns in 5 different market sectors: sportswear, workwear, automotive, contract office and outdoor, including specific additives to provide them with different functionalities
- scale up to create the first industrial pilot plant of comprehensive fibre-to-fibre recycling technology and validate the appropriate technologies for each stage of the process
- evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of integrating chemically r-PET into the textile industry, compared to conventional methods that use virgin PET
- achieve an expected net profit of €7.75 million in 3 years’ time, and €15.53 million 5 years after the project completion
- demonstrate the complete closed circularity of polyester within the textile sector, all within a single industrial process that transforms processed textile waste into new polyester fibres
- create a new textile waste management and business model, including the definition and promotion of a r-PET user guide, to foster textile recycling
RESULTS
The expected results of the LIFE POLITEX project are:
- improvement of the sorting and pretreatment of textile waste to adapt to new legislation and allow catalytic PET recycling so that by the end of the project, 3 015 tonnes/year of textile waste will be properly managed in Spain
- generation of 101 tonnes of PES-rich textile waste suitable to be chemically recycled
- production of 550 tonnes of r-PET resin from PES-rich textile waste through a new chemical catalytic depolymerisation process
- validation and implementation of heterogeneous catalysis for the depolymerisation of PET fibres, reducing costs and associated losses and waste
- validation of the resulting r-PET for application in the textile industry through repolymerisation to high quality filament yarns (50 tn)
- achievement of a high efficiency of the entire process (maximum 20% material loss) and high purity of resulting products and intermediates (99% purity of r-PET)
- production of r-PET using alternative heterogeneous catalysts to antimony
- avoiding the incineration of 550 tonnes textile waste and thus avoid 1 644.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent emitted from incineration
