Process for production of sugar from a cotton-containing textile
AssigneeCotton Incorporated
InventorsMatthew J. Farrell, Sha Fu, Mary A. Ankeny
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Cotton-containing textiles, such as “trash” feedstock in terms of end-of-life-cotton textiles, may be used to produce sugar without the same kinds of harsh pretreatments used for other biomasses, such as corn, grass sources, or wood. Disclosed is a process for production of sugar from a cotton-containing textile waste fabric comprising optionally mechanically pretreating the cotton-containing textile, pretreating the cotton-containing textile with an acid pretreatment to form a slurry, cooling the slurry, adding at least one base to the slurry, adding at least one additional acid to the slurry to form a buffer in situ, adding a hydrolysis enzyme, and optionally filtering the slurry.
Claims12
A process for processing a cotton-containing textile comprising:
- (a) pretreating the cotton-containing textile with a first weak acid pretreatment at elevated temperature in a range of about 240° F. to about 410° F. to form a cotton slurry,
- wherein the cotton-containing textile comprises cotton, cotton-blend, cotton/polyester blend, cotton/viscose/nylon blend, and mixtures thereof;
- (b) cooling the cotton slurry from (a) to a range of about 120° F. to about 160° F.;
- (c) adding at least one base to the slurry from (b);
- (d) adding a second weak acid to the slurry from (c) to form a buffer in situ;
- (e) adding at least one hydrolysis enzyme to the buffered slurry from (d) to run enzymatic hydrolysis of the slurry;
- and
- (f) filtering the slurry from (e) to separate hydrolysate from cotton-containing textile residue.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.