Making clothing from water-intensive cotton has a major impact on the climate. That’s why cellulose from other raw materials has come into focus in recent years as a more resource-smart method of textile production. Up to now, the efforts have concentrated on wood-based cellulose. But in a recently published study, researchers investigated a different path for cellulose fibre manufacture, by using waste products from agriculture, which Sweden has a lot of.
The researchers tested oat husks, wheat straw, potato pulp and sugar beet pulp. Oat husks and wheat straw turned out to work best to develop a pulp, called dissolving pulp, which is used to make clothing.
“With this method, which we further developed in this study, we show that you can make textile pulp from certain agricultural waste products,” says Diana Bernin, Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers and senior researcher in the study.
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