Technology Development
- State-of-the-art and Market Review
- Technology and Equipment Trials
The key challenge ACT UK is looking to overcome is the sorting and pre-processing of textiles at a large scale. To do that, we have undertaken a state-of-the-art and market review of existing and emerging technologies for advanced textile identification, conveyance methods, and pre-processing technologies. This data will inform the development and design of a blueprint for the Automated Textile Sorting and Pre-processing facility design, which is being led by key consortium partner, Circle-8 Textile Ecosystems, supported by the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC).
During the course of the project, we will trial commercially available and high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) to efficiently sort and pre-process high volumes of NRT to:
- Inform the selection of the best available solutions to be implemented in the Automated Textile Sorting and Pre-processing (ATSP)
- Identify opportunities to accelerate the development and implementation of these technologies at a large scale
ACT UK is looking for consultants to support with site evaluation, selection and securing of relevant permits for the facility. This includes advisors to review planning requirements, secure the lease, review of required permits and associated assessments, energy analysis, logistics analysis and local stakeholder engagement, to feed into site evaluation to shortlist preferred sites.
RFP: Site selection for UK’s first Automated Textile Sorting & Pre-Processing facility
State-of-the-art and Market Review
There is an increasing focus on textiles recycling, with more technology providers branching into the textiles market from municipal waste recycling with dedicated textiles departments. However, the textile recycling landscape is still developing, and there needs to be open communication between recyclers and technology providers so that their feedstock requirements can be understood, and equipment can be configured appropriately.
As part of the project, we are looking to fill the gap between recyclers and technology providers, by producing a report which reviews the commercially available technology for conveyance, fibre identification, size reduction and disruptor removal (such as zips, buttons etc), and their effectiveness in automatically sorting and pre-processing large volumes of non-reusable textiles. Further down the line, the team will also assess different equipment combinations and digitally simulate the facility under various operational scenarios, the results of which will inform the engineering design. This will ensure that the equipment selected for the ATSP facility, and its layout will deliver high throughput and meet the requirements of textiles recyclers.
There is generally not a one-size-fits-all solution for any of the technology areas, and each technology area has challenges that require further research and development to resolve. The project consortium will work together to identify opportunities and trials to improve the ATSP process and provide insight into the direction of the textiles recycling industry.
A brief overview of the findings from the review are:
- Horizontal belt conveyors are the industry standard for textile transport, but pneumatic options may offer an improvement dependant on the materials size and what processes have been completed.
- Although fibre identification is a well-developed technology area, current methods of placing textiles onto the conveyor system is highlighted as a bottleneck of the process.
- Disruptor removal is an area that has not seen many textile-specific developments. Two key types of machines, tearing machines with density/magnetic separation, and ballistic separators which have been used successfully in municipal waste and are now being configured for textiles. However, resulting yields and “quality” of the textile pose concerns for providing recyclers with high-quality feedstock at large volumes.
- Size reduction poses a challenge surrounding feedstock specifications for recycling, namely chemical recycling. Although many technology providers believe they can configure their equipment to produce feedstock to the specification required, further collaboration between recyclers and technology providers could see rapid developments in this area.
Emerging technologies utilising different methods to tackle some of the key challenges outlined above will be a key area of further research.