New research highlights the potential for recycled cotton fiber to serve as an alternative raw material in viscose production, paving the way for more sustainable textile manufacturing. Traditional viscose relies on certain wood species converted into highly purified cellulose sheets, but cotton waste, which also contains high-purity cellulose, could substitute for virgin wood-based pulp.Elise Meurs, PhD student in Chemical Engineering at the Exact Industrial Doctoral School, is leading the study. Her work compares pulped cotton from the company Circulose with conventional wood-based pulp in the initial steps of the viscose process, examining material properties that influence performance during fiber production.Globally, less than 1% of the 132 million tons of textile fibers produced each year come from recycled textiles. The research aims to scale up cotton recycling solutions to reduce resource consumption and environmental impact in the textile industry.The first article from this project has been published in Cellulose: Comparing swelling and liquid retention of pulps from textile waste and conventional dissolving pulps�.
Source: Karlstad University
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