An unusual use for textile production waste was proposed by Rakhim Khamitov, Artur Yakimov, Alena Uraleva and Bogdan Belkin, 3rd year Bachelor’s Degree students of the Institute of Petroleum, Chemistry and Nanotechnologies of KNRTU.

Their project took second place at the IP Russia Awards and received a grant of 100,000 rubles. This year, an independent jury evaluated 26 student papers from ten Russian universities. The young scientists faced the task of linking environmental innovations with the oil industry. Participants from Moscow, Kazan and Tyumen coped best with this task.

The “OilForce” team from KNRTU suggested to grind textile production waste, such as synthetic fabric scraps, buttons, pieces of plastic accessories in a grinding machine, then melt the resulting chips into a homogeneous mass and cool them in a such way as to produce plastic filaments. They will be a good fuel for a 3D printer, on which you can print constructor for kids and other useful things.

“The textile industry uses a lot of synthetics with up to 15-20% of polymers. Such fabric does not decompose in nature, but Russian factories, as far as we know, don’t recycle it in any way. We thought that textile industry waste could be as beneficial to society as plastic, which is given much more attention to recycling”, says Alena Uraleva.