Biocoat

Development of bio-based textile finishes for high performance textiles.

motivation

Coatings and finishes are widely used in the textile industry to create water repellency and resistanceas well as antimicrobial and fast drying effects or flame retardancy. Thus, increasing the benefit of apparel as such. Unfortunately, some of these effects are generated by environmentally hazardous chemicals, supposed to be restricted by regulatory bodies in the years to come. Moreover, the majority of the textile finishes today are made of non-renewable resources and cannot be biodegraded in nature. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to find bio-based and environmentally friendly alternatives, when developing bio-based textiles. Inspired by the BIOTEXFUTURE vision of a sustainable bio-based textile industry, this project focusses on finishes and coatings used for textiles.

Aim

The aim of the project is to replace conventional fossil-based textile finishes with the bio-based ones.

BIOCOAT VISUALIZED

APPROACH

In this project, two conventional finishes are selected in collaboration with the industrial partners as the project focus. The project uses nature-derived molecules called ‘peptides’ and nature-inspired innovative process (called ‘directed evolution’) to try to come up with a bio-based and biodegradable material that can replace the conventional chemistry used in textiles today. If successful, the project will demonstrate the feasibility of using this approach to replace conventional textile finishes.

The demonstration will be done on two selected product types, but the learnings are intended to be relevant for other products and textile sectors.

Project Partners

GET IN TOUCH

Dr. Felix Jakob jakob@dwi.rwth-aachen.de

Dr. Elisabeth Heine heine@dwi.rwth-aachen.de

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