Silk Recycling into Non-Woven Fabric for Garment Coat Application

Silk is renown for its handfeel and hygienic properties and is a valuable protein fiber. Traditional manufacturing of silk garment product generates off-cuts which, currently without a reliable method of recycling and reuse, is wasteful in terms of material, as well as energy spent in production. The challenge to recycle silk mainly lie on the properties of most silk product which is usually fine, light weight and with high-twist yarn, where conventional yarn and fiber opening process in textile recycling is unable to deal with efficiently. The present project aims to develop a custom opening process to handle silk fabric's light weight, fine and high-twist characteristic to recover the silk fibers, and subsequently feed these fiber into non-woven process to create fabric for coat-garment purpose directly without going through the traditional process of yarn spinning, knitting or weaving into fabrics. To attain suitable strength for coat-garment making, a sandwich structure with a silk-mesh skeleton between two layers of non-woven silk fabric is proposed.