Cotton-Based Waste (CBW) is one of the most promising sources for bioenergy production, which can achieve self-sufficiency in energy consumption in big cities or, at least, contribute to solving problems when facing energy shortages in some other places. Textile waste (TW) and banknote waste (BW) are belonging to this family, as they contain a huge amount of cotton (>50 wt.% for TW and >75 wt.% of BW). The amount of generated TW is estimated to be 58.8 tons daily and more than 69% (40.6 tons) of this amount are landfilled. Due to secrecy reasons situation in the case of BT is even more complicated and combustion or incineration is considered as the common route to dispose of them. The presence of dyes, ink, and other components inside these wastes are negatively affecting the quality and purity of the obtained fuel, especially when dyes and ink contain heavy metals, like Al, Fe, Cu, etc. Energy conversion usually is carried out at relatively low temperatures, even when thermal processes, like pyrolysis, gasification, or incineration are used. At such conditions the obtained gas products are contaminated by these metals, without decomposed them. This research project aims to overcome the above mentioned obstacles and produce bioethanol from cotton fibres and paper of CBW. Use of microbial biotechnology for solving this problem would lead to high economic and environmental benefits. This goal can be achieved through solving four tasks: 1. Liberate cotton fibre and cotton paper from TW and BW; 2. Reduce the crystalline structure of the recovered cotton to increase the microbial bioconversion rate and yield; 3. Optimize process of fungal hydrolysis of TW and BW for production of glucose; 4. Optimize production of bioethanol from CBW-derived glucose using mixed microbial fermentation.
Project funding:
KTU R&D&I Fund
Period of project implementation: 2019-04-01 - 2019-12-31
Project partners: Vytautas Magnus University
