Exergy Footprint Assessment of Cotton Textile Recycling to Polyethylene

Alexandra Plesu Popescu, Yen Keong Cheah, Petar Sabev Varbanov, Jiří Jaromír Klemeš, Mohammad Reda Kabli and Khurram Shahzad
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Alexandra Plesu Popescu: Department of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Yen Keong Cheah: Department of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, University of Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Petar Sabev Varbanov: Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory—SPIL, NETME Centre, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology—VUT BRNO, Technická 2896/2, 61669 Brno, Czech Republic
Jiří Jaromír Klemeš: Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory—SPIL, NETME Centre, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology—VUT BRNO, Technická 2896/2, 61669 Brno, Czech Republic
Mohammad Reda Kabli: Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
Khurram Shahzad: Center of Excellence in Environmental Studies, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia

Energies, 2021, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-22

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: chemical recycling; GHG emissions; Exergy Footprint; cotton textile recycling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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