FungalFibers

Biodegradable, antibiotic solution-spun chitosan fibres from a reliable, reproducible and highly scalable production process based on fungal biomass from fermentation processes

motivation

Against the background of limited resources such as petroleum, water and arable land, as well as increasing environmental degradation and conflict potentials, there is a great social and entrepreneurial interest in providing competitive, socially and ecologically sustainable raw material alternatives for the textile industry.

Aim

The goal of this project is to develop a completely new process chain for the production of bio-based, vegan textiles from chitosan fibers (filament and staple fiber yarns). Chitosan is chemically closely related to chitin, the most abundant compound in living nature after cellulose. It occurs naturally in a variety of sources: Insects, crab and crayfish shells, and as a structure-determining cell wall component of all fungi. Therefore, chitin can be a derived from by-products in the production of crab meat, insect protein, or fungal biomass waste from industrial processes. Chitosan, for its part, can be readily produced from chitin by deacetylation.

APPROACH

The present project intends to produce chitosan from the well-established and globally dominant industrial cell factory Aspergillus niger with very high throughput, high quality and purity, short production time, gentle extraction and multiple refining and transformation options. Here, the chitosan is obtained from secondary raw material sources (waste stream from industrial filamentous fungal cultivation) as well as primary raw material sources (industrial filamentous fungal cultivation).

The remarkable properties of chitosan such as biodegradability, antibioticity and compatibility with cotton and cellulose make it a promising biomaterial for the production of natural fibers for textile applications.

Project Partners

GET IN TOUCH

M.Sc. Simon Kammler Project Lead simon.kammler@ita.rwth-aachen.de

Norina Ackermann Deputy Project Lead norina.ackermann@adidas.com

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