Separation of fibers

Abstract

There is provided a method for separation of fibers in for instance recycled textile, starting with a mixture comprising cellulose fibers and non-cellulose fibers and then reducing the cellulose chain length of the cellulose fibers so that the limiting viscosity number determined according to ISO 5351 is in the interval 200-900 ml/g, mechanically breaking agglomerates of fibers into smaller pieces, adjusting the concentration of fibers to 0.1-4 wt %, and subjecting the mixture to flotation to remove the non-cellulose fibers. Non-cellulosic fibers such as synthetic fibers can be removed very specifically without or essentially without removing cellulose fibers in the mixture. This gives a very high degree of removal and simultaneously the yield is kept high because no or only few cellulose fibers are removed.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.