Textile Waste Valorization Using Submerged Filamentous Fungal Fermentation

Textile waste is one type of municipal solid waste growing rapidly in recent years. In Hong Kong, 306 t of textile waste were produced daily in 2015 and more than 90% of these ended up in landfill. This is the first paper which utilizes textile wastes as substrate for cellulase production via submerged fungal fermentation, the resultant fungal cellulase was subsequently utilised in textile waste hydrolysis for recovery of glucose and polyester. Trichoderma reesei ATCC 24449 was selected with the highest cellulase activity (18.75 FPU/g) after cultivation using textile blending cotton/polyester 40/60 as substrate. Cellulase production was upscaled in a 5-L bioreactor and the resultant cellulase was used in textile waste hydrolysis. Glucose recovery yield of 41.6% and 44.6% were obtained using fungal cellulase and commercial cellulase, respectively. These results suggest the proposed process has a great potential in treating textile waste and facilitating the recovery of glucose and polyester as value-added products.