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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NeoCel (NeoCel â€“ Novel processes for sustainable cellulose-based materials)

Teaser

Summary

NeoCel develops a new viable process to produce sustainable textile fibres based on forest resource and recycled textiles. The textile fibres currently dominating the market, polyester and cotton, cause huge environmental impact. Polyester is based on fossil feedstock and cotton has a large environmental footprint in terms of water consumption, use of fertilizers and pesticides. Along with a growing demand for textiles worldwide due to increased living standard comes a demand and need for sustainable alternatives. Man-made cellulosic fibres, where cellulose molecules from wood or discarded textiles are extracted and regenerated into fibres, is a more viable alternative. But todayâ€™s production of such fibres, i.e. viscose and Lyocell, involve explosive and hazardous chemicals and hence modified or new production routes are needed. The project will utilize cellulose from the forest as well as from textile waste to increase the value of the forest and support the shift to a circular and bio-based economy. The process is developed in order to be easily integrated into existing pulp-mills to limit the investment cost and to provide a new revenue stream. The process will be validated and evaluated in terms of process efficiency and sustainability (LCA).

Work performed

The scope of the NeoCel project covers development along the full length of the value chain of the textile materials, starting at the molecular level in the lab with the ambition to upscale the process. During the first 18 months of the project the main focus has been a collaboration on the early stages of the textile fibre production e.g. raw material processing, dope preparation and fibre regeneration. The chemical processes developed by the consortium partners are refined with input from the partners working upstream in the value chain preparing the processes for upscaling. The partnersâ€™ technologies are also refined to be working together in a coherent process. Simultaneously, the manufacturing partners are, besides sharing their expertise for the scalability preparing for the prototyping of the novel NeoCel fibres into garments, starting with a prototype made of commercial fibres as benchmark. From day one of the project, the partners have been engaged in system integration, energy efficiency evaluation and sustainability assessment to make sure the process has positive environmental impact and is economically feasible, starting with preliminary estimations that guides the development and data gathering.

Final results

Within the NeoCel project many current novelties along the alkaline textile fibre production process chain will be further developed and combined with each other to result into the NeoCel process. This novel cold alkali process will be designed for integration with the pulp mill and this process integration when realized in the future will lead to strongly reduced environmental impact, operational cost reduction of the textile production process and to improvement of fibre properties towards those of cotton. The project is expected to result in new findings and advances such as raw material adaptation with special cooking methods and/or enzymatic treatment, innovative chemical system for cellulose dissolution and coagulation, chemical regeneration, novel process additives and finishing chemicals as well as methods for better process integration.