For the past 3 years, I have been working at CuRe Technology as an R&D engineer with a large focus on our development of recycling processes for textile waste. During these years, I’ve been involved in the development of our core polyester recycling process, as well as pre-treatment processes of feedstock and all “post-cure” processes necessary to deliver the best quality rPET, such as solid-state post-condensation.
My role in the production runs of our core process is to ensure the quality of the product we are producing, the stability of the process at every stage and to provide the necessary information to the operator crew.
My role for the T-REX Project is to guide our initiatives in our pilot plant located in Emmen, the Netherlands. Here, we have an R&D lab for lab-scale testing and a pilot plant for larger scale trials. I am involved in both of these for any samples of larger trials we are doing for the project. In addition, I am involved in the feedstock preparation using our newly-built shredding and compacting line, also located in Emmen.
I believe the largest challenge for this project, and post-consumer textile recycling in general, will be to develop a robust and cost-effective way to analyse what is in the feedstock. Taking representative feedstock samples and knowing what measurements to take to know how to set up the process of recycling the materials in the most effective way will be a winning formula.
A full textile recycling process will open up access to a very large pool of local feedstock for producing textile-to-textile fibre as well as other polyester based products within the EU itself.
If all goes well, I would envision a material economy where polymers are used interchangeably for textile, packaging and other applications without the need for large amounts of virgin, oil-derived polymers from outside the EU.
