Textile Recycling Method for Loss-Making Material Streams
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing recycling processes for used clothing and domestic textiles often result in loss-making material streams with low economic value, which are not efficiently processed, leading to increased costs and potential waste, due to contamination and mixed materials.
Innovation Solution
The method involves reducing the size of textile materials into uniform fibre particles, buffering and mixing them to achieve desired compositions of cellulose and acrylate, and then combining them with a resin to form a new product, such as pressed plates, which increases the economic value beyond the additional processing costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If used clothing is collected and sorted into material streams, then the material can be recycled into useful products, but the sorting process requires large amounts of manual labor and results in many low-value material streams
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the complex sorting process into distinct stages: pre-selection of usable items, fine sorting of material streams, and processing of fiber particles. This segmentation allows each stage to be optimized independently, reducing overall process complexity while maintaining high recycling productivity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary processing stage where sorted material streams are converted into standardized fiber particles. This intermediary form serves as a universal input for various end products, simplifying the complexity of handling diverse material streams directly.
2Reliability
If material streams are sorted with almost constant constitutions, then commercial yield can be improved, but the economic value of many streams remains low due to contamination and mixed materials
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts harmful contaminants (metals, dyes, non-textile materials) from the material streams during the sorting and processing stages. This extraction purifies the material streams, maintaining consistent composition while eliminating economic value-reducing contaminants.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the physical and chemical parameters of the material during processing, including particle size reduction to standardized dimensions and chemical treatment to remove contaminants. These parameter changes transform low-value mixed materials into high-value consistent material streams suitable for various applications.
3Adaptability or versatility
If fiber particles are produced with specific size ranges, then the material can be used for various applications, but the processing costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies partial size reduction processing, reducing fibers to particle sizes in the range of 0.2-2.0 mm only when needed for specific applications. For applications where larger fibers are acceptable, the full size reduction process is omitted, reducing processing costs while maintaining versatility for different end uses.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method is described for recycling used clothes and domestic textile. After examining and sorting the received material (2) and subdividing the received material in a large number of mutually different material streams (3) with to a higher or lesser extent profit making product (WMP) and to a higher or lesser extent loss making product (VGP), the method comprises the steps of : selecting one or more of the loss making products; possibly removing, at least partly, undesirable materials such as for instance rubber, glue, elastic- reducing the size of the selected product; mixing the reduced product with a resin; pressing the resulting mass in a desired shape; allowing the mass pressed in shape to harden.