Processes for treating yarns and/or textiles comprising elastomeric fibers in combination with polyamide and/or polyester synthetic fibers

A process for recovering caprolactam from a yarn or textile that comprises polyamide fibers in combination with elastomeric fibers, the process comprising:

• A1. placing the yarn or textile in contact with a solvent comprising caprolactam to obtain a two-phase system comprising:
• (a) a liquid phase, comprising an elastomeric polymer dissolved in the solvent;
• and
• (b) a solid phase, comprising the polyamide fibers;
• A2. separating the solid phase (b) from the liquid phase (a) to recover the polyamide fibers;
• A3. coagulating the elastomeric polymer in the liquid phase (a) leaving step A2;
• A4. separating the coagulated elastomeric polymer from the liquid phase (a) comprising the solvent;
• B. submitting the polyamide fibers recovered in step A2 to a polyamide hydrolytic depolymerisation reaction to obtain an aqueous solution of the caprolactam;
• and
• C. feeding a first aliquot of the aqueous solution of the caprolactam to a purification system to obtain purified caprolactam;
• wherein in the step A1, the solvent comprises at least one second aliquot of the aqueous solution of the caprolactam obtained in the step B, and
• wherein the elastomeric fibers comprise fibers of an aromatic elastomeric thermoplastic polyurethane that comprise a reaction product of components comprising at least one polyol and at least one aromatic polyisocyanate.