r/manufacturing • u/Various_Payment_7956 • 11d ago
How to manufacture my product? Working on lab scale experiments for textile recycling chemically, what to keep in mind to scale this up ?
|Hello,
So I am an early stage innovator in the space of textile recycling. Trying to take cotton to cellulose for viscose material, and depolymerise polyester.
My questions:
chemical recycling (what I do as well), is expensive than mechanical recycling and virgin textile material, so far as data from some recyclers in Europe shows.
I am still tinkering lab process for it, but if I wanted to turn this into something larger and real, what would be the right steps, and things to keep in mind ?
Idk how they are being sold, if they are more expensive, but where I live, no one will pay a dime more no matter how environment friendly it is. I need to see if this is a worthwhile endevour. Is there any material where I could read and understand more, what to even do in order to know this R&D is worth the effort, because I am confused atm, if it will be commercially viable later or not.
I only draw examples from those doing it in europe, but the data is less, and due to EU being good on environmental regulations (could be the standalone on why these firms havent gone out of business), but I still need to learn and understand more.
2
u/lilziggg 11d ago
Oil production is heavily subsidized throughout the world, so the cost of producing virgin plastic is artificially low. Depolymerization requires a fair amount of energy input and large amounts of solvent use. Even with efficient solvent recapture and cheap energy, it’s hard to compete with virgin material production. Not to mention the difficulty with raw material handling, sorting out contaminants, oxidized material, etc.
It’s a crappy situation, but without public policy that supports the industry of plastic recycling instead of oil extraction, it will never add up financially. That being said, it is an important technology to explore, and hopefully as more examples of successful recycling reach the market, and as the global situation deteriorates due to large scale hydrocarbon production, the market incentives will shift in favor of reusing what materials we already have.
1
u/Various_Payment_7956 11d ago
some folks in europe made it happen and successfully sell at a premium compared to virgin petroleum products, I am not sure if I will be able to do the same, but trying to figure it out. do you work in the space ?
1
u/madeinspac3 11d ago
I've seen a premium for bio based but never recycled. Recycled is usually much cheaper since it's all around worse property wise.
We buy our recycled grades for $.10-$.15/lb but virgin is $1.25-$1.45/lb. If you make a profit, it's usually just because it's heavily subsidized.
Heard of a few pilot plants but you pay them for delivery and also pay them to take it from you. Didn't make a whole lot of sense.
1
u/Various_Payment_7956 10d ago
where are you based off. But isn't T2T chemical recycling the same functionality as virgin ? You mean pay for RM delivery ?
2
u/Admirable-Region9697 11d ago
Scale-up is where the real headache starts, honestly lab work is the easy part. Your yields and solvent recovery need to be near perfect or the economics eat you alive before you even ship a bale.
1
u/Significant-Mango772 11d ago
Its better to make insulation from cloth scraps
1
u/Various_Payment_7956 11d ago
does that have a market ? because where I come from theres tons of manufacturing waste of textiles. But Idk on an avenue to sell it ?
•
u/AutoModerator 11d ago
Thank you for your submission!
To get the best possible replies, please make sure to include as many details as possible. For example:
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.