Elsevier

Waste Management

Volume 107, 15 April 2020, Pages 227-234
Waste Management

Cotton based composite fabric reinforced with waste polyester fibers for improved mechanical properties

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2020.04.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A PET cotton blend fabric was prepared using chemical recycling method.

  • The proposed composite would act as a substitute for a commercially available PET.

  • The mechanical properties of this fabric were almost doubled.

  • Utilizing waste fiber is expected to change the conventional manufacturing process.

Abstract

With the focus of industries shifting towards sustainable processing methods and the use of sustainable raw materials, reuse and recycling of polyester have gained a lot of momentum. In spite of considerable efforts, the utilization of polyester fiber waste has not yet found a strong foundation in textile processing. In this paper, waste polyester fibers obtained during the melt spinning process has been utilized by first dissolving it in an m-cresol solvent and later by chemical route polyester is regenerated on cotton leading to the preparation of cotton based composite fabric. The presence of polyester was confirmed using XRD, FTIR, and percent add on and SEM. Percent add on of 9.7% along with the doubling of tensile strength and enhanced thermal stability was observed. The results can make a way as one of the possibilities of utilizing polyester fiber waste.

Introduction

Overall improvement in the living standards, as well as the high rate of population growth in the world, has led to an increased demand for fiber production and consumption (Haslinger et al., 2019). But this improved demand comes only at the cost of a higher amount of industrial fiber waste mainly due to the spinning and weaving processes among the others.

In recent years, the global annual textile fiber production exceeded 82 million tons, of which around 60% consisted of synthetic materials. Nowadays, polyester (PET) controls the clothing industry, with a yearly output of more than 22.67 billion tones worldwide (Iszatt, 2019). Rapid development and higher production capacity of textile industries resulted in higher production of waste fibers. Hence, in the context of economic issues and environmental protection, there is a growing interest in developing recycling processes to produce valuable products from waste fibers (Sinha et al., 2010).

In the production of PET materials, such as fibers, filaments, films, bottles, and other molded articles, a considerable amount of waste is generated (Awaja and Pavel, 2005, Park and Kim, 2014). In a typical PET staple fiber industry, the residue obtained in the different processing steps is shown in Table 1s (Bandyopadhyay et al., 1991).

Thus, one can note that the waste from the spinning industry alone accounts for almost 50% of the total fiber waste produced and combined with other processing techniques, it makes up nearly the entirety of the waste fiber production (Wang et al., 2019). Hence, the development of processes which utilize such fibrous wastes and convert them into meaningful products is the need of the hour to prevent the growing impact of such non-biodegradable waste on the environment.

The non-biodegradable nature of PET fibers creates a menace and piles on to the impact on the environment (Leng et al., 2018). Also, the small cut length of these fibers, like the 2 mm, makes them difficult to be re-utilized in the manufacturing process and also leads to the air pollution through the fly-off created by such small and light fibers. Multiple studies have shown synthetic fibers make up a good share of microplastics found in waters and are widely implicated as the source of pollution. In fact, it’s been suggested that more than 4,500 fibers can be released per gram of clothing per wash, according to the Plastic Soup Foundation (De Falco et al., 2018, Yang et al., 2019). Microfibers are so tiny they can effortlessly move through sewage treatment plants. They do not biodegrade and bind with molecules from harmful chemicals found in wastewater. They are then eaten by small fishes and plankton, concentrating toxins and going up the food chain, until they reach us (Karami et al., 2017, Lusher et al., 2017, Van Cauwenberghe and Janssen, 2014, Yang et al., 2015). The consequences on the human body are yet to be researched and revealed.

Lot of research work has been done on recycling of PET fiber from blends. Navone et al. have separated PET from PET wool blend using enzymatic degradation method (Navone et al., 2020), recycling of cotton PET blends by various methods like using ionic solvent (De Silva et al., 2014, Haslinger et al., 2019), two step method of acid treatment as well as mechanical treatment (Ouchi et al., 2010), phosphoric acid (Shen et al., 2013) has been done. Various method for recycling of PET bottles has been developed like hydrolysis (Sun et al., 2018) glycolysis along with microwave irradiation (Chaudhary et al., 2013, Shah et al., 2013), electron beam radiations (Jamdar et al., 2017).

In this paper, we have proposed a method to utilize this PET fiber waste that is obtained from spinning and weaving industries and manufacture a composite fabric by chemical treatment of the waste. This process provides a new approach towards manufacturing technique for blended fabric and also reduces the impact of PET waste fibers on the environment. In this method, the PET fibers are first dissolved in a suitable solvent, selected very carefully keeping in account the environmental and health hazards, and is then regenerated on top of the cotton fabric using another solution. This regeneration of the PET particles takes place in the core and surface of the cotton fabric, providing the particles a high degree of resistance to washing and abrasion.

Another motive behind the proposal of this project is to simplify the manufacturing process of PET-cotton blend fabrics. PET cotton blended fabrics right now are manufactured via a complicated process where the fibers are first mixed with each other in a fixed proportion, followed by spinning them into a single yarn and finally producing a fabric via weaving or knitting. This process becomes very time and energy-intensive because of the multiple steps involved. First, the process begins with the process of blending the two types of fibers in the required ratio. This is followed by the general spinning process consisting of almost 8–10 steps before giving the necessary output from a yarn (Akhtar et al., 2019). Followed by this is another sequence of a method for dyeing of cotton and PET component separately using different dyeing systems.

There are various solvents that are used to dissolve PET very frequently, and researchers are coming up with newer solutions to achieve this objective (Goje and Mishra, 2003, Raheem et al., 2019). In spite of the large volume of data available, selection of a solvent based on the environmental concerns is another study in itself. The selection of the most appropriate solvent was essential as it will dictate the time period of the entire process and also affect the production rate at an industrial scale. Some of the factors which dictate the selection of the solvent are operating time, operating temperature, toxicity, and cost. The solvent selected for the purpose should satisfy two requirements: (1) the polymer should not undergo depolymerization in the solvent, and (2) the polymer must be rapidly and efficiently recovered from the solution. After considering all these factors with significant emphasis on cost and temperature of dissolution, a conclusion was made of using m-cresol as the solvent for dissolving PET as it is also environmentally friendly.

Section snippets

Materials

The fibers used in the production of the composite fabric were obtained from Reliance Industries Ltd, Patalganga from their spinning setup having a staple length of 2 mm. M-cresol utilized to dissolve the PET fibers and pellets of sodium hydroxide were obtained from SD Fine chemical Ltd., India. Reactive dye based on vinyl sulphone chemistry (Remezol Deep Black RGB) was kindly provided by Dystar India Ltd., Mumbai. The experiments were carried out on a lab-scale padding mangle and a

Grams per square meter (GSM) of the fabric

GSM of the fabric was measured on the GSM measuring machine provided by of Rossari Biotech, Mumbai, India.

Percent Add-on

% Add-on of the composite fabric was calculated using the Eq. (1).%Addon=Finalweightoffabric-InitialweightoffabricInitialweightoffabric×100

Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)

FTIR spectra of the fabrics were evaluated using, FTIR-8400S (Shimadzu Corporation, Japan) in the range from 4000 to 650 cm−1 at 4.0 resolution and 36 scans per sample.

Thermogravimetric (TGA) and differential thermal analysis (DTA)

The thermal behavior of the samples was analyzed by the thermogravimetric analyzer,

GSM and percent add on

To further substantiate the deposition of the PET particles on the cotton substrate, the changes in gram per square meter of the fabrics as well as % add on were determined. Based on the results obtained Fig. 2s, it can be seen that composites made using a higher concentration of PET fibers in the solution resulted in higher GSM of the fabric, increasing from 114 to 124. This change in GSM also corresponded to increase in % add on, achieving a maximum value of 9.7%. The PET which was dissolved

Conclusion

The proposed composite would act as a substitute for a commercially available PET cotton blend of low percentages because of its composition and improved properties. This composite fabric possessed hydrophobic character as evidenced by its lower surface energy and low moisture content. The crystallinity of composite as compared to the cotton fabric increased to 59.29% from 55.81%. The thermal stability of the composite sample proved; it was more stable having the weight loss of 3.0% for 5% PET

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 would like to acknowledge word bank sponsored TEQIP-III Process Intensification for providing funds required to carry out testing. Also, would like to thank DST-FIST for providing testing facilities.

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