Recycling of cellulose from vegetable fiber waste for sustainable industrial applications

Recently two significant topics that became important for textile industry namely ‘providing sustainability by reusing of textile wastes’ and ‘developing high-valued new textile raw materials. Cellulose, which is a fascinating polymer, has been used for years as a raw material to obtain various products such as papers, fibers and films. In this study, it is aimed to provide sustainability with recycling of cellulose from waste jute fibers, considering the amount of waste jute weft yarns released in the production process of machine carpets. For this purpose, pre-cleaning of waste fibers was carried out at first, and then extraction of cellulose was accomplished, and finally characterization of recycled cellulose was performed. Organic acid extraction method was effective for isolation of cellulose from waste fibers with 43.65% yield performance. Microscopic and experimental analyses confirmed that non-cellulosic part of waste fibers were removed successfully and recycled cellulose has similar structure with control cellulose. Our results suggest that, waste vegetable fibers can be used as a potential source for cellulose. Recycled cellulose can be used in the production of paper, composites, regenerated cellulose fibers and other industrial applications.