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Procedural development for chemical separation of cotton/polyester blends for textile recycling

The apparel and textiles industries negatively impact the environment along each phase of a textile's lifecycle - from fiber production to product disposal. While use of recycled textiles are becoming more desirable, separation of blended textiles for recycling poses a great challenge for the industry to become more sustainable. The purpose of this study was to explore solvents and percentages needed to chemically separate blended textiles into single-fiber solutions. For this experiment, three different percentages of cotton/polyester textiles were tested: 75/25%, 50/50%, and 25/75%. Chemical processing was performed following AATCC TM20A-2004. A mixture of dichloromethane/trifluoracetic acid (DCM/TFA) was used to chemically separate the fibers. It was concluded that the more polyester present in the original textile, the more successful the separation of fibers occurred, suggesting strong recycling potential. Future research may explore the electrospinning process for recycling, including equipment settings, time, and molecular adjustments to create a high-performance fiber-web recycled textile.