In the United States (US), sustainable technology company Anellotech Inc. has announced plans to begin advanced lab testing and scale-up for "Tex-TCat", an innovative recycling solution to the growing problem of mixed textile waste.
The fashion industry produces 100 billion garments each year. Although the call for circular fashion is increasingly urgent, 92 million tonnes of waste still end up in landfills.
This waste is due to the lack of commercially viable recycling technologies for low-quality and mixed textiles as well as textile blends.
While garments like 100 percent cotton or polyester are recyclable with legacy technologies, Tex-TCat is a recycling solution that complements mono-fiber garments as well as all non-recyclable blends and functional textiles.
Closed-loop technology for mixed textile waste
According to the company, its proprietary Tex-TCat fluid bed catalytic pyrolysis technology is the first that efficiently recycles mixed waste textiles directly into the same chemical feedstocks – including benzene, toluene, and xylenes (BTX) – that are used today to make virgin synthetics like polyester and nylon thereby providing a closed-loop, fiber-to-fiber solution to today’s textile recycling problems.
Tex-TCat delivers a direct pathway from mixed textile waste to secondary materials (BTX) instead of intermediates like pyrolysis oil, and without the incineration or combustion of waste feedstock.
Lab-scale studies have demonstrated that Tex-TCat can process a variety of common textile materials that are incinerated or landfilled today — including cotton, polyester, nylon, elastane, acrylic, and polyurethane as well as blends of these and other commonly used textile materials.
Tex-TCat has the potential to divert large quantities of previously unrecyclable textiles from landfills and provide major brands, through their existing suppliers, with recycled content. The technology promises to be a key enabler of the textile industry’s work to become more sustainable, said David Sudolsky, President and CEO of Anellotech.
Tex-TCat’s unique features include:
- Recycles synthetic and natural fibers as well as blends into valuable chemicals, effectively improving circular economics and lowering global greenhouse gas emissions.
- Plans to operate at scale with the first plant able to process ~200 000 tonnes per year, and subsequent plants as large as one million tonnes, depending on feedstock availability.
The development program’s next steps include optimizing the feedstock preparation for efficient reactor feeding as well as additional lab studies that will lead to long-term trials in Anellotech’s fully automated 0.5-tonne-per-day process demonstration plant.
The company is currently seeking forward-looking companies to join them in accelerating the development and commercial implementation of the Tex-TCat technology.
