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The chemical recycling of cellulosic fibres may represent a next-generation fibre–fibre recycling system for cotton textiles, though remaining challenges include how to accommodate fibre blends, dyes, wrinkle-free finishes, and other impurities from finishing. These challenges may disrupt the regeneration process steps and reduce the fibre quality. This study examines the impact on regenerated viscose fibre properties of a novel alkaline/acid bleaching sequence to strip reactive dyes and dimethyloldihydroxyethyleneureas (DMDHEU) wrinkle-free finish from cotton textiles. Potentially, such a bleaching sequence could advantageously be integrated into the viscose process, reducing the costs and environmental impact of the product. The study investigates the spinning performance and mechanical properties (e.g., tenacity and elongation) of the regenerated viscose fibres. The alkaline/acid bleaching sequence was found to strip the reactive dye and DMDHEU wrinkle-free finish from the cotton fabric, so the resulting pulp could successfully be spun into viscose fibres, though the mechanical properties of these fibres were worse than those of commercial viscose fibres. This study finds that reactive dyes and DMDHEU wrinkle-free finish affect the viscose dope quality and the regeneration performance. The results might lead to progress in overcoming quality challenges in cellulosic chemical recycling.

openaire: EC/H2020/646226/EU//Trash-2-Cash The aim of this study is to improve the understanding of which end-of-life cellulosic textiles can be used for chemical recycling according to their composition, wear life and laundering—domestic versus service sector. For that purpose, end-of-life textiles were generated through laboratorial laundering of virgin fabrics under domestic and industrial conditions, and the cellulose content and its intrinsic viscosity and molar mass distribution were measured in all samples after two, 10, 20, and 50 laundering cycles. Results presented herein also address the knowledge gap concerning polymer properties of end-of-life man-made cellulosic fabrics—viscose and Lyocell. The results show that post-consumer textiles from the home consumer sector, using domestic laundering, can be assumed to have a similar, or only slightly lower, degree of polymerization than the virgin textiles (−15%). Post-consumer textiles from the service sector, using industrial laundering, can be assumed to have a substantially lower degree of polymerization. An approximate decrease of up to 80% of the original degree of polymerization can be expected when they are worn out. A higher relative decrease for cotton than man-made cellulosic textiles is expected. Furthermore, in these laboratorial laundering trials, no evidence evolved that the cellulose content in blended polyester fabrics would be significantly affected by domestic or industrial laundering. With respect to molar mass distribution, domestic post-consumer cotton waste seems to be the most suitable feedstock for chemical textile recycling using Lyocell-type processes, although a pre-treatment step might be required to remove contaminants and lower the intrinsic viscosity to 400–500 ml/g.

Recycling of textiles is of importance due to the large amount of waste generated from the increasing consumption and use worldwide. Cotton-rich pre-consumer textiles are considered as potential raw material for production of man-made regenerated fibres, but demands purification from the blends with synthetic fibres as well as the dyes and finishing chemicals. In this study we explore the use of different pre-treatments of pre-consumer textiles to meet specific parameters for production of fibres in the cold NaOH(aq) or cellulose carbamate process. The pre-treatments consisted of different bleaching sequences and were performed on both uncoloured and coloured pre-consumer textiles. For the uncoloured textile, degree of polymerisation and amount of inorganic content was efficiently reduced making the material suitable for both the cold NaOH(aq) and the cellulose carbamate process. In case of the coloured textile, the pre-treatments were able to remove the dye and decrease the inorganic content as well as reduce the degree of polymerisation but only sufficiently enough for production of fibres in the cellulose carbamate process. The work was able to prove a fibre-to-fibre concept while further optimisation of the regeneration steps is expected to improve the mechanical properties of the produced fibres in future studies.

Extended-impregnation kraft cooking (EIC) is a cooking concept that combines prolonged impregnation with modern improved modified kraft cooking. In the current investigation, the EIC cooking of bir ...

Common metrics for evaluating the efficiency of oxygen delignification include the kappa number and Klason lignin content. As a change in xylan content often leads to a change in HexA content, the kappa number must be corrected for the HexA contribution before evaluating the degree of oxygen delignification when trying to understand the process in detail. Questions could also be raised about the accuracy of the Klason lignin method for oxygen-delignified hardwood kraft pulps, since the amount of residual lignin is small in such pulp. This study investigates the influence of xylan content on oxygen delignification efficiency in Eucalyptus urograndis kraft pulps. Xylan content was varied using two methods: treatment with xylanase and with acid prehydrolysis for various times before kraft cooking. The degree of oxygen delignification, expressed as the HexA-corrected kappa number, indicated no significant trend with xylan removal, and no significant trend was evident when expressed as Klason lignin content.

A potential way to improve the overall yield is to terminate the kraft cook at higher kappa number. This method was investigated using Extended Impregnation kraft Cook (EIC). As a reference, kraft ...

This study has shown that ultrafiltration allows the selective extraction from industrial black liquors of lignin fraction with specific thermo-mechanical properties, which can be matched to the intended end uses. Ultrafiltration resulted in the efficient fractionation of kraft lignin according to its molecular weight, with an accumulation of sulfur-containing compounds in the low-molecular weight fractions. The obtained lignin samples had a varying quantities of functional groups, which correlated with their molecular weight with decreased molecular size, the lignin fractions had a higher amount of phenolic hydroxyl groups and fewer aliphatic hydroxyl groups. Depending on the molecular weight, glass-transition temperatures (Tg) between 70 and 170C were obtained for lignin samples isolated from the same batch of black liquor, a tendency confirmed by two independent methods, DSC, and dynamic rheology (DMA). The Fox-Flory equation adequately described the relationship between the number average molecular masses (Mn) and T g's-irrespective of the method applied. DMA showed that low-molecular-weight lignin exhibits a good flow behavior as well as high-temperature crosslinking capability. Unfractionated and high molecular weight lignin (Mw >5 kDa), on the other hand, do not soften sufficiently and may require additional modifications for use in thermal processings where melt-flow is required as the first step.

Compared to conventional kraft cooking, (CK), extended-impregnation kraft cooking (EIC) gives higher yield of cellulose and xylan. In the present study, the amount of xylan and its degree of substitution (DS) with 4-O-methyl glucuronic acid (MeGlcA) and hexenuronic acid groups (HexA) in unbleached and OD*(OP)D-bleached E. urograndis EIC and CK has been compared. Additionally, the molecular weight distributions of the EIC and CK pulps after oxygen delignification and of xylan isolated from these pulps were investigated. The EIC cooking resulted in pulps with xylan with higher degree of substitution with both 4-O-methyl glucuronic acid and hexenuronic acid groups. The DS of xylan with hexenuronic acid groups increased progressively when the kappa number of the pulps decreased from 34 to 16. Also after oxygen delignification and D*(OP)D bleaching, the xylan in the EIC pulps possessed up to 50% more MeGlcA groups than the xylan in the CK pulp. Almost all the HexA groups were removed from the pulps during bleaching. The weight average molecular weight of cellulose in unbleached EIC pulps was higher than for cellulose in CK pulps. Xylan in EIC pulps had a wider molecular weight distribution than xylan in CK pulps.

The long-term trend regarding wood is an increase in price. Because wood contributes to a large part of production costs, the efficient utilisation of wood is greatly desired to reduce production costs for kraft pulp producers. During the 1990s, the development of improved modified kraft cooking began, which led to higher yields. There was also a trend of terminating kraft cooking at a higher kappa number to maximise the overall yield. For hardwood, the defibration point became a critical setback in allowing this termination at a high kappa number. This thesis discusses how this issue has been tackled in the laboratory by using improved modified kraft cooking combined with extended impregnation to enable a decrease in reject content and shift the defibration point towards a higher kappa number for hardwood. This lab concept is referred to as extended impregnation kraft cooking (EIC), and this thesis reveals that EIC cooking efficiently reduces the reject content for both birch and eucalypt. By using EIC cooking, the defibration point was shifted to a kappa number of ca. 30 from ca. 20 using conventional kraft cooking. This study demonstrates the great potential for achieving a higher overall yield for eucalypt by terminating the EIC cooking at a high kappa number, but with the conditions used in this thesis, no improvement in yield was observed for birch. An important issue is that the termination of kraft cooking at high kappa number increases the demand for extended oxygen delignification to reach a similar kappa number into bleaching, i.e., due to cost and environmental reasons. Extended oxygen delignification was shown to be possible for both birch and eucalypt EIC pulps (i.e., from kappa number 27 to 10) with an acceptable pulp viscosity number. The other part of this thesis addresses aspects regarding the limitations in oxygen delignification. It has previously been shown in the literature that a high xylan yield of kraft cooking could negatively affect the efficiency of subsequent oxygen delignification. In this work, the increased xylan content in eucalypt kraft pulp within the range of 8–18% had only a marginally negative impact on the oxygen delignification efficiency after correcting for the HexA contribution to the kappa number. It is also desired to extend the oxygen delignification towards lower kappa number, i.e., below kappa number 10 to decrease the bleaching chemical requirement. In this study, the hypothesis that the reduced efficiency of oxygen delignification at low kappa numbers could partly be due to the formation of oxidisable carbohydrate-related structures (i.e., HexA and/or other non-lignin structures) was also tested. No formation was established. On the other hand, a final oxygen delignification stage in the bleaching could be an attractive alternative for reducing yellowing and enhancing brightness; in fact, this has led to the development of a patent (SE 528066).