Finnish fibre innovation moves towards industrial scale production
26/04/2017
A joint project called TeKiDe involves transforming wood fibres and discarded cotton textiles, such as used sheets and towels, into viscose-type fibre to be used as raw material for textile products. It produces the fibre in a more environmentally friendly way than normally applies to viscose. The project is being funded by the Helsinki-Uusimaa regional council’s structural fund for mainland Finland, the City of Espoo and the two project partners.
The test runs will be performed at VTT’s Bioruukki piloting centre in Espoo, where a piloting environment based on wet spinning techniques has been built this spring.
Ioncell-F technology is based on direct dissolution of cellulose and has been developed in collaboration between Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. The process uses a dry-jet wet spinning technique, which gives fibres with a high level of tenacity. The most important part of the project is to develop a recovery system that would enable closed water and chemical loops in the process, VTT has said.
In the first trial, approximately 150 kilos of cellulose fibre will be produced from recycled cotton using technology owned by VTT. Dissolution of cellulose is enhanced by forming carbamate groups in cellulose chains with the help of urea. The cellulose carbamate thus formed dissolves in cold sodium zincate solution, which is regenerated into carbamate fibre by precipitating the solution in acid.
Another potential technology to be demonstrated is BioCelSol, which is jointly owned by VTT and the Tampere University of Technology. In BioCelSol technology, the dissolution of cellulose is enhanced by means of mechanical and enzymatic treatments before dissolution in sodium zincate. Trials using BioCelSol technology have not been confirmed yet.
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