RESYNTEX: innovation in textile recycling

European textile sector needs to move towards a more circular economy in order to reduce its impacts on the environment and society. Currently, many textiles materials contained in products are discarded as waste after-use, leading to the loss of valuable materials and resources.

RESYNTEX is a research project which aims to innovate recycling process for post consumer textile waste, through industrial symbiosis, transforming it into secondary raw materials.

Post-consumer non-wearable textile waste is sorted by material and undergoes a pre-treatment process. Cellulose, polyester and polyamide materials undergo a process of discolouration, biochemical depolymerisation to be respectively transformed into glucose, ethylene glycol, terephathalic acid and polyamide oligomers. Protein based materials, including wool undergo a chemical degradation which transform theme into Amino acids and peptides. During this process all water is recycled. The outcome products are: ethanol can be produced from cellulose-based materials. PET resin are produced from the depolymerised PET and value-added chemicals are produced from polyamide oligomers.

Post-consumer non-wearable textile waste are transformed into value added chemicals. RESYNTEX focuses on:

- Designing a complete value chain from textile waste collection through to the generation of new feedstock for chemicals and textiles

- Improving collection approaches while increasing public awareness of textile waste and social involvement

- Enabling traceability of waste using data aggregation. The collected data will evaluate the performance of the new value chains by means of a life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing (LCC)

- Developing innovative business models for the chemical and textile industries

- Demonstrating a complete reprocessing line for basic textile components, including liquid and solid waste treatment