ReSTex – Recovery Strategies of Textiles

The Josef Ressel Center “ReSTex – Recovery Strategies for Textiles”, addresses one of the central issues on the way to more sustainable societies and bioeconomies: the recycling of textiles. The focus is on utilization of cellulosic textiles and the separation of cellulosic blends, such as cotton / polyester, the so-called “polycotton”. The Ressel Center is located at the University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt, Biotech Campus Tulln and will tackle the scientific challenges of the topic together with its scientific partners, two institutes at the University of Natural Resources (BOKU) and one at TU Vienna, and four partner companies. Two general recycling routes will be explored: first, the selective dissolution of cellulosic blended textiles aims at separating the cotton and PET fractions in polymeric form without extensive degradation. Second, cellulose hydrolysis by biotechnological methods converts cellulose to fermentable carbohydrates while purifying out the PET fraction from polycotton blends. Initial work phases address screening and characterization of the starting textile blends, as well as evaluation of requirements for recycling. A database of spectral analysis data will be established and processed by AI. Several pre-treatment methods and special cellulose solvents for separation of cotton-rich articles will be tested. Follow-up work optimizes the solvents/solvent systems towards improved selectivity, suitable conditions for minimal impact on polymer integrity in case of high cotton fractions.