Volume 142, Issue 10 e56567
RESEARCH ARTICLE

The Upcycling of Polyester Fabric for High-Performance HDPE/WPET Composites via Solid-State Drawing

Liang Li

Liang Li

State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Contribution: Data curation (lead), Formal analysis (lead), Writing - original draft (lead)

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Xvtong Du

Xvtong Du

State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Contribution: Data curation (equal), Formal analysis (equal)

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Shuangqiao Yang

Corresponding Author

Shuangqiao Yang

State Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials Engineering, Polymer Research Institute of Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

Tianfu Yongxing Laboratory, Chengdu, China

Correspondence:

Shuangqiao Yang ([email protected]; [email protected])

Contribution: Conceptualization (equal), Funding acquisition (lead), Supervision (lead), Writing - review & editing (equal)

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First published: 09 December 2024

Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52103123), the Tianfu Yongxing Laboratory Organized Research Project Funding (2023KJGG11), Sichuan University Student Innovation Training Program (C2024131757), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2023SCUH0008).

ABSTRACT

Polyester is the most widely used synthetic fiber globally. However, recycled products from waste polyester textiles (WPET) often suffer from poor performance and low value. This paper introduces solid-state shear milling technology (S3M) to transform WPET into ultrafine fiber powder with a high aspect ratio, followed by solid-state drawing processing producing to produce high performance HDPE/WPET composites. Compared with the pure high density, the flexural strength of WPET with 15% content increased to 24.94 MPa, while the tensile modulus and flexural modulus increased to 507 and 798 MPa, respectively, and the prestretched sheet with good performance was prepared. At a solid-state drawing ratio of 6, the composite exhibited an impressive tensile strength of 116.8 MPa, representing a 600% increase compared to unstretched samples. Additionally, the in-plane thermal conductivity reached 2.89 W/mK, which was 438% higher than unstretched samples. SAXS and 2D-WAXD analyses demonstrated that high solid-state drawing enhanced the orientation of WPET fibers and HDPE, forming an oriented structure. This led to composite crystallinity and orientation levels of 63.7% and 93%, respectively. This study has represented a novel approach to producing high-performance functional products from dye-containing polyester fabrics without requiring separation or physical recovery processes.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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