(385ae) Hydrothermal Clothing Recycling

About 17 million tons of clothing is produced every year in the U.S. and 66% ends up in landfills. Natural cotton and wool eventually break down to produce leachates that can enter the water table and methane that is a major greenhouse gas. Synthetic polyester, nylon, spandex, and acrylic clothing persists as an environmental pollutant that disintegrates into microplastics that have been found in human bodies and even freshly fallen Antarctic snow. Clothing is exceptionally difficult to recycle because most clothes are a mixture of natural and synthetic fabrics that cannot be manually separated. As a result, most reused clothing is downcycled to fillers and insulation. In this work, we examine the feasibility of using a catalytic, hydrothermal process to react cotton to water soluble products and recover solid polyester. With an acidic catalyst, the cotton undergoes hydrolysis to form soluble sugars and sugar-derivatives. The polyester is unreacted and can be recycled into new clothes and other products. We tested conditions to maximize polyester recovery and cotton conversion. We will discuss the effect of different reaction conditions (temperature, residence time, catalyst, pre-treatment, loading) and the resulting product purity, breakdown, and yield.