Publication detail

Exergy Footprint Assessment of Cotton Textile Recycling to Polyethylene

Popescu, A.P. Cheah, Y.K. Varbanov, P.S. Klemeš, J.J. Kabli, M.R. Shahzad, K.

English title

Exergy Footprint Assessment of Cotton Textile Recycling to Polyethylene

Type

journal article in Web of Science

Language

en

Original abstract

Circular economy implementations tend to decrease the human pressure on the environment, but not all produce footprint reductions. That observation brings the need for tools for the evaluation of recycling processes. Based on the Exergy Footprint concept, the presented work formulates a procedure for its application to industrial chemical recycling processes. It illustrates its application in the example of cotton waste recycling. This includes the evaluation of the entire process chain of polyethylene synthesis by recycling cotton waste. The chemical recycling stages are identified and used to construct the entire flowsheet that eliminates the cotton waste and its footprints at the expense of additional exergy input. The exergy performance of the process is evaluated. The identified exergy assets and liabilities are 138 MJ/kg ethylene and 153 MJ/kg ethylene, reducing the Exergy Footprint by 75% and the greenhouse gas footprint by 43% compared to the linear pattern of polyethylene production. The exergy requirements for producing raw cotton constitute a large fraction of the liabilities, while the polyethylene degradation provides the main asset in the reduction of the Exergy Footprint.

English abstract

Circular economy implementations tend to decrease the human pressure on the environment, but not all produce footprint reductions. That observation brings the need for tools for the evaluation of recycling processes. Based on the Exergy Footprint concept, the presented work formulates a procedure for its application to industrial chemical recycling processes. It illustrates its application in the example of cotton waste recycling. This includes the evaluation of the entire process chain of polyethylene synthesis by recycling cotton waste. The chemical recycling stages are identified and used to construct the entire flowsheet that eliminates the cotton waste and its footprints at the expense of additional exergy input. The exergy performance of the process is evaluated. The identified exergy assets and liabilities are 138 MJ/kg ethylene and 153 MJ/kg ethylene, reducing the Exergy Footprint by 75% and the greenhouse gas footprint by 43% compared to the linear pattern of polyethylene production. The exergy requirements for producing raw cotton constitute a large fraction of the liabilities, while the polyethylene degradation provides the main asset in the reduction of the Exergy Footprint.

Keywords in English

chemical recycling; GHG emissions; Exergy Footprint; cotton textile recycling

Released

01.01.2022

Publisher

MDPI

Location

BASEL

ISSN

1996-1073

Volume

1

Number

15

Pages from–to

205–205

Pages count

22

BIBTEX


@article{BUT176214,
  author="Petar Sabev {Varbanov} and Jiří {Klemeš},
  title="Exergy Footprint Assessment of Cotton Textile Recycling to Polyethylene",
  year="2022",
  volume="1",
  number="15",
  month="January",
  pages="205--205",
  publisher="MDPI",
  address="BASEL",
  issn="1996-1073"
}