Recycling resources is one major pillar of the sustainability concept across the industries but especially so in textiles. The fact was driven home at the first virtual Global Fiber Congress where a whole session was dedicated to this aspect.
Oerlikon Group’s Manmade Fibers segment ‘as the sole manufacturer’ offers an entire mechanical recycling chain – from preparing the recycled materials and producing the melt to the textured package. VacuFil, a solution supplied by Barmag Brückner Engineering (BBE) – a subsidiary of Oerlikon Barmag, ensures a stable process in the recycled quality yarns. This solution enables bottle-to-bottle and bottle-to-textile processes besides also help process textile waste into chips, which is in complete alignment with their zero-waste philosophy.
Speaking about solutions available in the market currently, Markus Reichwein, Head – Product Management, Oerlikon Barmag shares: “The VacuFil concept is installed upstream to an Oerlikon Barmag POY system, which transforms the recycled melt into filament yarn of the accustomed high quality. As texturing solutions, Oerlikon Barmag offers its state-of-the-art automatic eAFK-series systems, including the latest generation of the eAFK Evo, which was unveiled at the ITMA Barcelona last year. Yarn manufacturers wishing to continue texturing manually can use the eFK series.”
According to the official report, with the VarioFil R+, producers of smaller batches now also have a compact system with an integrated recycled materials preparation unit at their disposal. The system offers a special extrusion system for bottle flake materials, the latest metering and mixing technology for spindyeing and expanded 2-stage melt filtration. The four spinning positions are each equipped with an Oerlikon Barmag 10-end WINGS POY winder.
He further states: “Chemical recycling for mixed fabrics continues to present the textile industry with major challenges. Manmade Fibers segment of the Oerlikon Group is currently working on solutions for transforming these fabrics into new textiles.” And this is in keeping with their knowhow of developing modern materials where recycling is a major process in their quest for sustainability!
