Sustainable energy generation from textile biowaste and its challenges: A comprehensive review
Graphical abstract
Introduction
The use of textiles encompasses industries ranging from healthcare to high-tech fashion and beyond. The basic material for textiles is the fiber that can be broadly classified as natural and man-made category and their applications belong to the following three wide areas namely apparel, home furnishings and technical or industrial. The amount of global fiber production is more than 111 million metric tons per year and it would reach 146 million metric tons by 2030 [1]. Likewise, the global annual textile consumption is nearly 13 kg/person [2]. The Fig. 1 depicts the average clothing utilization in different parts of the world. In fact, the industrialized countries consume more textiles and eventually produce higher proportions of waste.
Generally, the textile industry is water and energy intensive that consumes colossal amount of natural resources responsible for water pollution scarcity of natural resources and emission of greenhouse gases leading to global warming [3,4]. The energy consumption of cotton and polyester garments processing industry is 6.6648 × 104 and 9.1508 × 104 kWh, respectively along with, additional 30–40% energy load due to packaging, transportation and sales of these garments [5,6].
This energy is produced by burning fossil fuels dominating the world energy market worthy of US$ 1.85 trillion in 2019 [8]. The consumption of fossil fuel has increased rapidly for the generation of power and energy in different industries including textile processing [9]. Currently, about 1000 barrels of fossil fuels are being burned in every second in the world [10]. The reckless use of fossil fuels is a crucial factor that results in global warming due to release of greenhouse gases. Due to the rise in world temperature more than 2 °C, millions of people would lose their lives globally and nearly one million species would be extinct completely from the earth [11]. In addition, owing to the burgeoning population growth worldwide and rapid industrialization, the total energy demand of the world is increasing exponentially leading to whopping consumption of the fossil fuels [12]. As per the report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world energy consumption will rise nearly 50% from 2018 to 2050 [7]. A probable forecasting regarding the future energy demand is presented in Fig. 2. If the statistics becomes factual and the current trend of energy consumptions continues, it is believed that the fossil fuels (oil and gas) of the world will be exhausted by 2042 causing an ultimate energy scarcity [13,14]. Moreover, due to limited resource and active contribution to environmental pollution, the fossil fuels are considered as an unsustainable source of energy generation [15]. Hence, it is very urgent to search for an alternative large-scale sustainable energy source to overcome the future energy crisis of the world.
Against this backdrop of alarming situation, researchers all over the world are trying to find out the sustainable source of bioenergy that would play a pivotal role in the future challenge to energy security [16]. Understanding the ultimate risk of fossil fuels, many countries in the world has initiated the production of renewable bioenergy from biomass since 1970s [16]. Bioenergy can be of various forms: biogas, biodiesel, bioethanol, bio-hydrogen and bioelectricity [17,18]. Biomass is mainly categorized as first generation (sugarcane, corn, wheat, starch, vegetables oils and animal fats etc.), second generation (non-edible lignocellulosic biomass) and third generation (microalgae and other microbes) bioresource for biofuel production [[15], [16], [17], [18], [19]]. The production of biofuels from the first-generation biomass has been criticized for various reasons: (i) risk of scarcity of food and negative impact on biodiversity (ii) unpopular and less competitive with the existing fuels and (iii) limited GHG reduction [20]. Unlike the first-generation biofuel technology, there is no need for land and water in case of second and third generation biofuel production. The residues of agriculture, forestry, sewage sludge, industrial and municipal wastes are considered as the potential source of biofuel production in this regard [21,22]. Moreover, the emissions of GHG from third generation biofuel are much lower than those of first-generation biofuel generating materials.
Textile and fashion industries generate a huge amount of bio-waste in several forms having heterogeneous conditions. Biowaste from textile industries is mainly comprised of cellulose, hemicelluloses, protein, starch which can be used as low-cost raw materials for the biotechnological manufacturing of bioenergy [23,24]. The waste is generated from natural fiber cultivation and processing, yarn spinning, fabric and garments processing and post-consumer operations. It is assumed that in 2030, overall textile waste is going to reach 148 million tons out of them more than 35% will be cellulose based waste [25]. Apart from this, a huge amount of solid and liquid textile wastes is also produced during textile manufacturing process [[26], [27], [28]]. Moreover, due to fast changing fashion trend, the global clothing demand is being increased which eventually flourishes the generation of post-consumer textile waste. Therefore, textile wastes are considered as promising and sustainable resource for bioenergy production. In recent years, fast improvement has been observed in various waste related to bioenergy generation. Numerous studies and reviews on bioenergy are available with a divergent flavor or importance. But the production of bioenergy from textile waste has not yet been studied extensively. To the best of our knowledge, there is no review on bioenergy production from waste of textile and fashion industries. The aim of this review is to summarize the key aspects of bioenergy production from textile biowaste.
Focus will be first directed towards fundamental of textile operations and subsequent waste generation with their potentiality for bioenergy production. The bioenergy generation from textile biowaste has been critically examined in this review with their existing shortcomings. In addition, a vivid speculation on the prospect of renewable and sustainable power and energy generation from textile wastes has also been highlighted in this review.
Section snippets
Fundamental textile operations and waste generation
The textile industries involve a diverse range of operations for the processing of natural and manmade fiber in fragmented group of establishments that produce fibers, yarns and fabrics for further finishing to produce clothing, home furnishings and industrial textiles. The prime raw material of textile industry is the fiber that is mainly categorized into cellulose fiber, protein fiber and synthetic fiber. Cellulosic fibers are extracted from plant materials such as cotton, flax, jute, hemp,
3. Composition of textile biowaste
The textile bio waste is chiefly categorized as solid waste and effluent [42]. The solid waste can be further sub divided into pre-consumer or in processing waste and post-consumer waste mentioned earlier. The pre-consumer textile solid waste contains biodegradable components such as cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin originated from ginning process of cotton fibers. The second category processing textile solid wastes includes fibers and fiber lint and yarns from spinning process and finally yarn
Environmental impact of textile waste
The rapid growth of textile and fashion industries are making pollution footprint in each step of textile lifecycle [50,51]. Likewise, household attire consumption has a significant impact on pollution footprint. For example, the annual water consumption of an average sized family is equivalent to the water quantity of 1000 bath tubs and the release of CO2 equals to that much release of a car running about 9500 km [[52], [53], [54]]. Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) has
Bioenergy generation from textile biowaste
Textile solid wastes are mostly fibrous materials that include cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin collectively being considered as biowaste. The in process solid waste includes cotton seed, cotton gin trash, spinning and weaving waste, post-consumer cotton textiles and textile effluent [60]. This type of waste has a higher content of organic compounds which make it a perfect candidate for conversion into bioenergy. A number of conversion methods are available for getting bioenergy from
Outlooks
The essence of textiles in civilized society is eternal encompassing from cradle to death. This manufacturing unit would exist as long as human life survive in the world. Consequently, textile waste generation would continue as life goes on. In modern times, the waste generation in textile operation is ceaselessly increasing with alarming whopping rate causing serious disturbance in everyday life. The generation of bioenergy from textile waste facilitates the human society in two fold way:
Key challenges and future recommendations
The advantage of bioenergy over petrofuel is well documented. In 2018, global biofuels production was 154 billion liters, which will increase by 25% in 2024 as per IEA report of 2020 [151]. The near future, China, the USA and Brazil will be the biggest consumers of bioenergy. Several countries around the world have already started bioenergy project commercially and on industrial scale. The European countries like Germany, France, UK, Poland and Italy are collectively producing around 10 Mtoe y−1
Conclusions
Since the global energy crisis is looming large with ever increasing depletion of fossil fuels, the search for alternative bio-based energy generation has grabbed the immense attention of the researchers. The world leaders are highly concerned about global warming and thus reliance on fossil fuels needs to be reduced by renewables like bioenergy. The waste biomass is a potential source for bioenergy generation. Therefore, this review has compiled several recent attempts for sustainable
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
The authors like to give sincere thanks to Ex-Supernumerary Professor Dr. Nurul Islam, Department of Chemistry, DUET, Bangladesh. The authors were also grateful to the Dhaka University of Engineering & Technology, (DUET), Gazipur. This research work was fully funded by the DUET (DUET-CASR/4008-2019). The author also wishes to thanks to the anonymous reviewers and editor for their helpful suggestions and enlightening comments.
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