Bio-Manufacturing textiles from waste

人们越来越关注时尚行业对环境的影响。仅英国每年就有100多万吨纺织品被送往垃圾填埋和焚烧。此外，纺织生产的环境足迹很差，棉花是种植的水分和化学密集度最高的作物之一。人造丝和粘胶是由从树木中提取的纤维素化学再生而成的半合成纺织纤维。我们已经开发出可以从农业副产品和城市固体废物的生物部分生产纤维素的方法。我们建议使用这种纤维素作为目前从树木中提取的纤维素的替代品。从废物中生产这些材料将极大地减少纺织品的环境足迹。我们用两种方法从废物中生产纤维素。对于小麦秸秆等作物残渣，我们使用酶来提纯占这种材料约40%的纤维素。在这个过程中，秸秆中的其余多糖被转化为单糖，我们将使用Komagataeibacter xylinus利用细菌发酵将这些转化为纤维素。我们还将利用城市固体废物(MSW)的生物部分来生产纤维素。对于这部分工作，我们将使用商业高压灭菌产生的纤维作为原料。这种纤维含有大量的多糖(主要从废纸和卡片中提取)，我们用酶将其水解，产生单糖，这些单糖可以进入我们的细菌发酵系统，以产生纤维素。我们提议的工作包括最大限度地提高我们生产纤维素的系统的生产率，试验从我们的纤维素生产类似粘胶的再生纤维，以及生产和测试由这些纤维制成的纺织品。拟议的工作将使我们能够提高工艺效率，并产生数据，使我们能够进行技术经济分析，以评估这一纺织制造新工艺的商业可行性。我们还将使用生命周期分析来评估以这种方式制造纺织品对环境的影响。我们将生产我们的纤维和纺织品样品，让潜在的最终用户评估其质量，并与从原料供应到时尚零售商的供应链上的公司制定一项商业计划。

There is increasing concern about the environmental impacts of the fashion sector. The UK alone sends more than 1 million tonnes of textiles to landfill and incineration every year. In addition, the environmental footprint of textile production is poor, with cotton being one of the most water and chemically intensive crops grown. Rayon and viscose are semi-synthetic textile fibres made from the chemical regeneration of cellulose extracted from trees. We have developed methods by which we can produce cellulose from agricultural by-products and the biological fraction of municipal solid waste. We propose to use this cellulose as a replacement for that currently derived from trees. Producing these materials from waste will greatly reduce the environmental footprint of textiles. We produce cellulose from waste in two ways. For crop residues such as wheat straw, we use enzymes to purify the cellulose that make up about 40% of this material. The rest of the polysaccharides in straw are converted into simple sugars during this process, and we will use bacterial fermentation to convert these into cellulose using Komagataeibacter xylinus. We will also use the biological fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW) to produce cellulose. For this part of the work we will use a fibre produced by the commercial autoclaving of MSW as a feedstock. This fibre contains large amounts of polysaccharides (mostly derived from waste paper and card) that we hydrolyse with enzymes to produce simple sugars that can be fed into our bacterial fermentation system to produce cellulose. Our proposed work involves maximising the productivity of our systems for producing cellulose, trialling the production of viscose-like regenerated fibres from our cellulose, and producing and testing textiles made from these fibres. The proposed work will allow us to increase process efficiency and to generate data to allow us to carry out a techno-economic analysis to assess the commercial viability of this novel process for textile manufacturing. We will also assess the environmental impacts of making textiles in this way using a life cycle analysis. We will produce samples of our fibres and textiles to allow potential end-users to assess their quality, and develop a business plan with companies from across the supply chain from feedstock provision to fashion retailers.