• Pitkänen, Marja
• Saarimaki, Eetta
• Heikkilä, Pirjo
• Kamppuri, Taina
• Harlin, Ali
• Mattila, Inga
• Niemeläinen, Matti

Abstract

The importance of replacing virgin materials with recycled ones is increasing due to the pressure form environmental point of view and the goals of resource efficiency. One well-known technology towards the circular economy is the mechanical recycling of textiles where end of life textiles are cut and shredded to open the textile structure to the fibre level. During the mechanical opening, the fibre length is decreased and the length distribution is widened meaning that the amount of short fibres and dust is increased. This can possibly increase the occupational hygiene risk during the processing of mechanically opened fibres. Textile dust is categorized as an organic dust and has occupational exposure limits for 15 minutes and 8 hours exposure. <br/><br/>The aim of this work was to evaluate the suitability of mechanically recycled fibres from post-consumer cotton textiles to ring spinning of yarn and follow the airborne dust formation during the processing steps. The results are compared to the reference measurements with virgin cotton fibres. The airborne dust formation was followed during the carding and ring spinning steps. The effect of mechanical opening on average fibre length, formation airborne dust and size distribution of dust particles will be discussed.<br/><br/>This work has been carried out within Telaketju project funded by Business Finland and Telaketju consortium (www.telaketju.fi).

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• spinning