Waste Valorization
We extract the valuable materials contained in industrial and agri-food waste and give them a new life.
Objective. To use textile cuttings to create decorative panels for stores.
Our client, a furniture manufacturer, wants to reuse textile offcuts from other companies to manufacture decorative panels for stores. Their current panel manufacturing process uses other materials but they would like to incorporate textile scraps to offer a new sustainable product in line with their circular economy strategy.
They need help in defining the best textile valorization process and how they can integrate it into their current industrial process.
Solution. We developed the valorization process and created the panels.
The first step was to know the textile waste we had to work with and what properties it had when we received it. We studied and explained to our customer what possible conditioning for these offcuts could be done and together we selected the controlled grinding that we combined with a synthetic mesh to act as a support.
The next step was to integrate the residue into our client’s industrial process, a thermocompression process. We performed tests to determine the maximum sample size taking into account the capacity of the hydraulic press. We optimized pressure and temperature values to ensure a good surface finish and mechanical resistance.
We performed the laboratory characterizations according to the quality standards of our customer and we compared the properties with the usual decorative panels. With this information they were able to define the final applications in which it is possible to apply these recycled textile panels.
The project ended with the delivery of the report and training to transfer all the know-how generated on this new valorization process.
