The technical centre of the Institite for Technical Tex
tiles (ITA) at RWTH Aachen University in Germany is
now equipped with an Amandus Kahl pellet press which
can efficiently compact shredded synthetic textiles at a
throughput of up to 25kg and process them into pellets
with a diameter of 4mm.
The resulting pellets are characterised by a homogeneous
geometry, defined bulk density and suitable flowability.
This enables them to be reliably dosed and continuously
fed into an extruder for thermomechanical textile
recycling on a pilot scale to be established.
Current research underway at the institute includes the
thermomechanical recycling of textiles made from
polylactic acid (PLA) in the RePLAy research project as
part of the Biotexfuture initiative, with assistance from the
Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.