IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v15y2021i1p205-d713585.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Exergy Footprint Assessment of Cotton Textile Recycling to Polyethylene

Author

Listed:
  • 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)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexandra Plesu Popescu & Yen Keong Cheah & Petar Sabev Varbanov & Jiří Jaromír Klemeš & Mohammad Reda Kabli & Khurram Shahzad, 2021. "Exergy Footprint Assessment of Cotton Textile Recycling to Polyethylene," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-22, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2021:i:1:p:205-:d:713585
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/205/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/205/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wang, Xue-Chao & Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír & Wang, Yutao & Foley, Aoife & Huisingh, Donald & Guan, Dabo & Dong, Xiaobin & Varbanov, Petar Sabev, 2021. "Unsustainable imbalances and inequities in Carbon-Water-Energy flows across the EU27," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    2. Kirilova, Elisaveta G. & Vladova, Rayka K. & Vaklieva-Bancheva, Natasha Gr, 2020. "Heat integration of two-stage autothermal thermophilic aerobic digestion system for reducing the impact of uncertainty," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhao, Shuchun & Guo, Junheng & Dang, Xiuhu & Ai, Bingyan & Zhang, Minqing & Li, Wei & Zhang, Jinli, 2022. "Energy consumption, flow characteristics and energy-efficient design of cup-shape blade stirred tank reactors: Computational fluid dynamics and artificial neural network investigation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 240(C).
    2. Misrol, Mohd Arif & Wan Alwi, Sharifah Rafidah & Lim, Jeng Shiun & Abd Manan, Zainuddin, 2021. "Optimization of energy-water-waste nexus at district level: A techno-economic approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    3. Wang, Xue-Chao & Jiang, Peng & Yang, Lan & Fan, Yee Van & Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír & Wang, Yutao, 2021. "Extended water-energy nexus contribution to environmentally-related sustainable development goals," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    4. Seferlis, Panos & Varbanov, Petar Sabev & Papadopoulos, Athanasios I. & Chin, Hon Huin & Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír, 2021. "Sustainable design, integration, and operation for energy high-performance process systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    5. Izabela Bartkowska & Paweł Biedka & Izabela Anna Tałałaj, 2020. "Production of Biosolids by Autothermal Thermophilic Aerobic Digestion (ATAD) from a Municipal Sewage Sludge: The Polish Case Study," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-14, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2021:i:1:p:205-:d:713585. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.