{"id":226055,"date":"2025-11-27T20:09:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/simple-solvent-makes-polycotton-fabric-completely-recyclable"},"modified":"2025-11-27T20:09:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T02:09:30","slug":"simple-solvent-makes-polycotton-fabric-completely-recyclable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/simple-solvent-makes-polycotton-fabric-completely-recyclable","title":{"rendered":"Simple solvent makes polycotton fabric completely recyclable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/simple-solvent-makes-polycotton-fabric-completely-recyclable.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What we think of as polyester fabric is most often actually a blend of polyester and cotton, which has proven very difficult to recycle. A new solvent, however, breaks the blend down into its two components, leaving both almost completely reusable.<\/p>\n<p>Made up of menthol and benzoic acid, the solution was developed by PhD student Nika Depope, Dr. Andreas Bartl and colleagues at the Vienna University of Technology.<\/p>\n<p>Although both substances are solid at room temperature, they take on a \u201cdeep eutectic solvent\u201d form when heated to a temperature of 216 \u00baC (421 \u00baF). When polycotton (polyester\/cotton blend) textiles are immersed in that liquid, it causes the polyester to dissolve and separate from the cotton fibers within just five minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What we think of as polyester fabric is most often actually a blend of polyester and cotton, which has proven very difficult to recycle. A new solvent, however, breaks the blend down into its two components, leaving both almost completely reusable. Made up of menthol and benzoic acid, the solution was developed by PhD student [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}