cotton - Greenmount Press

Ginning & fibre quality
Series supported by ECOM Commodities
Recycled textile fibre as a
reinforcement for composites
■ Dr Menghe Miao 1 , Samuel Ello-Ekombo 1 and Dr Stuart Gordon 1
ABOUT one million tonnes of textile fibre waste is
generated each year in Australia, of which about
900,000 tonnes goes to landfill. As 35–40 per cent of
textile products are cotton, the cotton pipeline has a significant
environmental responsibility to fulfil.
Pre-consumer textile waste is manufacturing waste generated
by processing fibres (be they natural or synthetic fibres) and
the production of finished yarns and textiles, technical textiles,
nonwovens, garments and footwear, including off-cuts,
selvages, shearings, rejected materials and B-grade garments.
Post-consumer textile waste consists of any type of garments or
FIGuRE 1: Left – Natural fibres are used to make
50 Mercedes-Benz E-Class components.
Right – Interior parts of the Mercedes A-200
made by Natural Mat Thermoplastic.
household textile (such as sheets or towels) that the consumer
no longer needs and decides to discard, either because they are
worn out, damaged, outgrown, or have gone out of fashion.
Recycling of textile waste gives the fibre a second life in a
rejuvenated life cycle and thus increases the total value of the
fibre. Much recycled fibre ends up in low-value product such as
furniture fillers and under-lays. The development of new, higher
value products from recycled fibres will encourage utilisation of
this ‘waste’ material and contribute to the future sustainability of
the cotton industry.
In textile products, fibres are held together by friction and
fibre length plays a very important role. The fibres recovered from
cotton textile wastes are usually sound in mechanical properties
although they are shorter than virgin fibres due to breakages
occurred in the reclaiming process. But in fibre reinforced polymer
composites, fibres are bonded together by the polymer resin and
the fibre length required to achieve load transfer is much shorter
than that in a friction-held textile structure.
In recent years, bast fibres (fibres from outer bark of straws),
such as flax, hemp, jute and kenaf, have been successfully
manufactured into polymeric composites (known as natural fibre
composites) and used as automotive parts, furniture, building and
packaging materials.
In comparison with glass fibres, natural fibres are lighter and
cheaper and offer multifunctional properties such as thermal and
TABLE 1: Fibre properties.
Fibre
Density Elongation
Tensile strength
Modulus
g/cm 3
%
MPa
cN/tex
GPa
cN/tex
Cotton [1,2] 1.5 7 400 30–40 5.5–12.6 500–700
Flax [3] 1.5 3 669 46 20 1377
Hemp [3] 1.4 2.2 645 44 17 1177
Jute [1,2] 1.3 1.8 393–773 31 26.5 1720
Kenaf [4] 1.3 1.6 430 33 26.9 2070
Polyester [2] 1.4 37 660 47 12 880
E–glass [1,2] 2.5 0.5 2000–3500 75 70 2940
Ginning & Fibre Quality
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38 — The Australian Cottongrower December 2012–January 2013