El ITENE technology center is advancing in the development of industrializable processes for the pretreatment, classification, and recycling of complex textile fractions, such as polyester and polycotton. Through mechanical and chemical techniques, the FIBREC project seeks convert waste into quality raw materials for strategic Valencian sectors such as packaging and the chemical industry. This addresses one of the textile sector's greatest challenges: the recycling of waste that currently ends up in landfills or incinerated.
El FIBREC project, financed by the Valencian Institute of Business Competitiveness (IVACE+i) with FEDER funds, runs from April 2025 to June 2026. Its objective is the valorization and reintroduction of these textile wastes into the value chain to transform them into quality raw materials and prevent them from ending up in landfills. This covers all types of textile waste: from separated, non-reusable textile fractions to the textile portion deposited at recycling centers.
The waste is analyzed and classified to identify and quantify the different materials present, which will allow us to determine its origin and establish stable sources of raw materials. A conditioning process will then be carried out, in which the fibers will be separated according to their composition and elements that could interfere with recycling (buttons, studs, zippers, coatings, etc.) will be removed. Finally, the materials will be transformed into raw materials through various processes and evaluated to confirm that they achieve a quality comparable to that of commercial raw materials used in the packaging and chemical industries.
“The FIBREC project emerged as a response to the loss of large volumes of textile products that currently end up in landfills. This situation is largely due to the lack of standardized and industrializable systems capable of recovering the polymeric material and polyester and polycotton blends present in textile waste. All this material generates a significant environmental footprint for which we are responsible as a society, but which, through a series of advanced treatments, can prove to be perfectly suitable for use in strategic sectors of the Valencian Community, such as packaging and the chemical industry,” he explains. Jaime Sanchis, project manager at ITENE.
With a pre-competitive approach, the project is being developed on a pilot scale and will be validated in real industrial environments, thus contributing to a more efficient and sustainable circular economy.
FIBREC will be implemented through three lines of action. Firstly, a study of the different fibrous waste and an optimized pretreatment and classification process will be designed to obtain pure material flows with which to obtain good recycling processes.
Subsequently, physical-mechanical recycling processes and injection molding transformation processes focused on packaging products will be developed and researched. Finally, chemical recycling processes will be developed to recover monomers of sufficient quality for repolymerization and recovery. The work will include scale-up in a pilot plant to validate its technical and industrial viability.
“Through the FIBREC project, we are taking a step further in textile waste recycling, since, despite selective collection efforts, only a small fraction of textile waste is recovered after a short period of use; the rest ends up in landfills or incinerators due to the difficulty in recovering heterogeneous materials with high levels of non-recyclable elements,” highlights the project leader. “Furthermore, waste deposited in general containers or recycling centers does not always have sorting processes, which results in a loss of recoverable resources and a lack of traceability. This situation is exacerbated by the increasing complexity of global supply chains, which has accentuated the need for local sources of raw materials such as recycled polyester, a viable alternative to imported virgin polymer,” he points out.
