Eco-friendly technology to produce energy from textile waste
A team of scientists from Kaunas University of Technology and Lithuanian Energy Institute proposed a method to convert lint-microfibers found in clothes dryers into energy
2021-06-14
(Press-News.org) A team of scientists from Kaunas University of Technology and Lithuanian Energy Institute proposed a method to convert lint-microfibers found in clothes dryers into energy. They not only constructed a pilot pyrolysis plant but also developed a mathematical model to calculate possible economic and environmental outcomes of the technology. Researchers estimate that by converting lint microfibers produced by 1 million people, almost 14 tons of oil, 21.5 tons of gas and nearly 10 tons of char could be produced.
Each year, the global population consumes approximately 80 billion pieces of clothing and approximately €140 million worth of it goes into landfill. This is accompanied by large amounts of emissions, causing serious environmental and health problems. One of the ways to lessen the footprint of consuming clothes is to reduce the laundry impact. During a machine-washing process of textile, around 300 mg of microfiber are generated from 1 kg of textile.
"Lint-microfibers are classified as microplastics. Whereas large plastic items can be sorted out and recycled relatively easily, this is not the case with microplastic - tiny plastic pieces, less than 5 mm in diameter. Large quantities of microplastic are being washed down our drains and enter our seas threatening the environment", says Dr Samy Yousef, senior researcher at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Design.
Dr Yousef is the leader of the inter-institutional team, which developed an eco-friendly technology to extract energy products from textile waste. For the experiment, lint-microfibers collected from the filters of the drying machines in the dormitories of KTU were collected. As the residents of the dormitories come from different cultures in Europe, Africa, Asia and America, the collected samples were very diverse. Using a pilot pyrolysis plant, built at the laboratories of Lithuanian Energy Institute, the scientists were able to extract three energy products - oil, gas and char - from the collected lint-microfiber batches. When treated thermally, the lint-microfibers decompose into energy products with around a 70 per cent conversion rate.
"When we think about textile waste, we usually imagine long fabric with high crystallinity, which is contaminated with dye and dirt. Much energy is needed to turn the solid waste into liquid. However, lint-microfiber is a somewhat 'broken fiber' textile waste; it has a uniform size and shape, contains a lot of flammable compounds (resulted cotton and polyester elements), its transformation is easier", says Dr Yousef.
Researchers also developed a mathematical model to evaluate the economic and environmental performance of the suggested strategy, based on the lint-microfibers generated by 1 million persons. The study shows that if applied on an industrial scale, the strategy is profitable and eco-friendly: the energy from the lint-microfiber generated by 1 million people has estimated profitability at around €100 thousand and reduced carbon footprint 42,039,000kg CO2-eq/t of lint-microfibers.
"I believe that the collection system, similar to deposit-return for drink containers, could be developed based on our research. A household would bring the lint-microfiber from their drying machine filters to a collection point and receive some kind of compensation for it. We have proposed the technology and made calculations, which may be developed further", says Dr Yousef.
According to research, lint-microfibers can be considered a renewable energy source that ensures sustainability and accelerates the general transition of the textile industry to a circular economy. In addition to the study described above, Dr Yousef and his research group have developed other green/eco-friendly technologies to extract cotton, glucose, and energy products from textile waste and end-of-life euro banknotes using mechanical, thermal, chemical, and biological treatments.
INFORMATION:
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-06-14
A new study found higher education students are more engaged and motivated when they are taught using playful pedagogy rather than the traditional lecture-based method. The study was conducted by University of Colorado Denver counseling researcher Lisa Forbes and was published in the Journal of Teaching and Learning.
While many educators in higher education believe play is a method that is solely used for elementary education, Forbes argues that play is important in post-secondary education to enhance student learning outcomes.
Throughout the spring 2020 semester, Forbes observed students who were enrolled in three of her courses between the ages of 23-43. To introduce playful pedagogy, Forbes included games and play, not always tied to the ...
2021-06-14
Solar flares jetting out from the sun and thunderstorms generated on Earth impact the planet's ionosphere in different ways, which have implications for the ability to conduct long range communications.
A team of researchers working with data collected by the Incoherent Scatter Radar (ISR) at the Arecibo Observatory, satellites, and lightning detectors in Puerto Rico have for the first time examined the simultaneous impacts of thunderstorms and solar flares on the ionospheric D-region (often referred to as the edge of space).
In the first of its kind analysis, the team determined that solar flares ...
2021-06-14
The types of land around us play an important role in how major storms will unfold -- flood waters may travel differently over rural versus urban areas, for example. However, it's challenging to get an accurate picture of land types using only satellite image data because it is so difficult to interpret.
Researchers at the Cockrell School of Engineering have, for the first time, applied a machine learning algorithm to measure the surface roughness of different types of land with a high level of detail. The team used a type of satellite imagery that is more dependable and easier to capture than typical optical photographs but also more challenging to analyze. And they are working to integrate this data into storm surge models to give a clearer ...
2021-06-14
Both during and after infection with the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, patients may suffer from severe neurological symptoms, including "anosmia", the loss of taste and smell typically associated with COVID-19. Along with direct damage caused by the virus, researchers suspect a role for excessive inflammatory responses in the disease. A team of researchers from the Freiburg University Medical Center and the Cluster of Excellence CIBSS has now shown that a severe inflammatory response can develop in the central nervous system of COVID-19 patients involving different immune cells around the vascular ...
2021-06-14
Dr Sebastian Hess and his team at the University of Cologne's Institute of Zoology have studied a very rare and puzzling tripartite symbiosis. This consortium consists of a ciliate as host and two types of endosymbionts: a green alga and a previously unknown purple bacterium. Through genetic analyses of the pink-green ciliate, the researchers discovered that the endosymbiotic bacterium belongs to the so-called 'purple sulfur bacteria' (family Chromatiaceae), but has lost the ability to oxidize reduced sulfur compounds, a hallmark of the other members of the Chromatiaceae. The genome of the purple bacterium is greatly reduced, suggesting that the bacterium became mainly specialized in carbon fixation through photosynthesis. It is probably no longer able to live outside of the host cell. Thus, ...
2021-06-14
Boston - Hypertension, or high blood pressure, kills more Americans than any other health condition. It is especially prevalent in Black Americans and is exacerbated by structural barriers to accessing high quality healthcare. In a 2018 randomized trial called the Los Angeles Barbershop Blood Pressure Study (LABBS), barbers were trained to screen their Black male patrons for hypertension and refer them to a pharmacist who visited the barbershop to counsel and treat individuals with high blood pressure. Participants in the barbershop-based, pharmacist-led program saw a 20-point drop in systolic (top number) blood pressure that they were able to sustain ...
2021-06-14
An international research team led by Professor Dr Frank Schäbitz has published a climate reconstruction of the last 200,000 years for Ethiopia. This means that high-resolution data are now available for the period when early Homo sapiens, our ancestors, made their way from Africa to Europe and Asia. Schäbitz and his colleagues determined the dates using a drill core of lake sediments deposited in southern Ethiopia's Chew Bahir Basin, which lies near human fossil sites. Temporal resolution of the samples, reaching nearly 10 years, revealed that from 200,000 to 125,000 years before our ...
2021-06-14
Does evolution explain why we can't resist a salty chip? Researchers at NC State University found that differences between the elemental composition of foods and the elemental needs of animals can explain the development of pleasing tastes like salty, umami and sweet.
Taste tells us a lot about foods before they are swallowed and digested, and some tastes correspond with the elemental composition of foods. For example, an aged steak lights up the umami taste receptors, because it has a high concentration of the element nitrogen, which occurs in amino acid molecules. Nitrogen is essential for survival, but often occurs in low concentrations relative ...
2021-06-14
(Boston)-- The concept of rationing medical resources during the height of COVID-19 pandemic created tremendous anxiety in the patient and healthcare communities. In planning for that possibility Massachusetts created a triage scoring system focusing on an acute survival score that considers chronic life-limiting medical conditions of the patient, but it does not provide specifics about how to value those conditions in the equation.
Now a new study supports prioritizing resources to those who are most likely to survive an acute illness as several chronic medical conditions had less of an impact on longer-term survival than previously suspected.
"No one ...
2021-06-14
(Boston)--Despite evidence regarding the benefits of vaginal birth after cesarean and recommendations to support shared decision making to reduce cesarean rates, minority women face many impediments that limit their access to appropriate health information and opportunities for such discussions.
Haitian women in Massachusetts have the highest rates of cesarean section and low rates of vaginal birth after cesarean, despite evidence suggesting that many are eligible to attempt vaginal birth after a previous cesarean.
Now a new study explores how Haitian women's beliefs, values and attitudes influence their decision making about pregnancy and birth after having had a cesarean delivery. In conjunction with the providers' views about Haitian women, the information ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Eco-friendly technology to produce energy from textile waste
A team of scientists from Kaunas University of Technology and Lithuanian Energy Institute proposed a method to convert lint-microfibers found in clothes dryers into energy
