Polymer company Covestro is working to develop a production process to make stretch fibres from carbon dioxide on an industrial scale, partly replacing crude oil as a raw material.
The company has teamed up with the Institute of Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen University and various textile manufacturers to make the synthetic fibre prototype from CO2 – and is now looking to make it market-ready.
The stretch fibres are made with a chemical component that consists in part of CO2 instead of oil. This precursor called cardyon is already used for foam in mattresses and sports floorings, and is now being applied to the textile industry.
The fibres are made from CO2-based thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) using a technique called melt spinning, in which the TPU is melted, pressed into very fine fibres and finally processed into a yarn. Unlike dry spinning, which is used to produce conventional synthetic stretch fibres such as elastane or spandex, melt spinning eliminates the need for environmentally harmful solvents, the company says.
A new chemical method enables carbon dioxide to be incorporated in the base material, which also has a better CO2 footprint than traditional elastic fibres.
The new fibres can be used for stockings and medical textiles, for example, and might even replace conventional stretch fibres based on crude oil. The CO2-based TPU fibres have already been tested by companies who have processed them into yarns, socks, compression tubes and tapes.
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By GlobalData“That’s a further, highly promising approach to enable ever broader use of carbon dioxide as an alternative raw material in the chemical industry and expand the raw materials base,” says Dr Markus Steilemann, CEO of Covestro. “Our goal is to use CO2 in more and more applications in a circular economy process and save crude oil.”
Professor Thomas Gries, director of the Institute of Textile Technology at RWTH Aachen University, adds: “The CO2-based material could be a sustainable alternative to conventional elastic fibres in the near future. Thanks to our expertise in industrial development and processing, we can jointly drive the establishment of a new raw materials base for the textile industry.”
The project was funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). It will now be optimised as part of the “CO2Tex” project, which is to be funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) so as to enable industrial production in the future.
