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Sultany, Mahtab

University of British Columbia

This thesis explores the catalytic pyrolysis of textile waste using different catalysts, zinc oxide (ZnO), zeolite, and potassium carbonate (K₂CO₃) to evaluate their effectiveness in enhancing the pyrolysis process and to examine their potential as a sustainable solution to mitigate the environmental impact of fast fashion. The global overproduction and overconsumption of clothing have led to the accumulation of millions of tons of post-industrial and post-consumer textile waste, causing environmental, economic, and social challenges. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was conducted on various textile materials, specifically cotton, polyester, and nylon, across a temperature range from room temperature to 700°C. The Flynn–Wall–Ozawa (FWO) method was employed to determine the activation energies associated with the pyrolysis of these materials. Key findings indicate that, among the single catalysts tested, ZnO exhibited the lowest activation energy for the pyrolysis of cotton, while K₂CO₃ was most effective for polyester and nylon. For binary mixtures, cotton/polyester, cotton/nylon, and polyester/nylon, the zeolite/K₂CO₃ combination demonstrated better catalytic performance. In contrast, for the ternary mixture of cotton/polyester/nylon, the ZnO/zeolite mixture showed the most significant catalytic enhancement. These findings reveal that optimizing catalysts in the pyrolysis process can greatly improve textile waste conversion, providing a sustainable solution for both resource recovery and environmental protection in the face of rising textile waste from fast fashion.

Text

2025-07-10

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91543

Chemical and Biological Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/