| Résumé : |
In considering materials that could become the fabrics of the future, scientists have largely dismissed one widely available option: polyethylene (PE).
The stuff of plastic wrap and grocery bags, polyethylene is thin and lightweight, and could keep the wearer cooler than most textiles because it lets heat through rather than trapping it in. But polyethylene would also lock in water and sweat, as it is unable to draw away and evaporate moisture. This anti-wicking property has been a major deterrent to polyethylene's adoption as a wearable textile.
Now, engineers of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA/USA, have spun polyethylene into fibers and yarns designed to wick away moisture. They wove the yarns into silky, lightweight fabrics that absorb and evaporate water more quickly than common tex¬tiles such as cotton, polyamide, and polyester. They have also calculated the ecological footprint that polyethylene would have if it were produced and used as a textile. Counter to most assumptions, they estimate that polyethylene fabrics may have a smaller environmental im-pact over their life cycle than cotton and polyamide textiles.
The researchers hope that fabrics made from polyethylene could provide an incentive to recycle plastic bags and other polyethyl¬ene products made from this material into wearable textiles, adding to its sustainability.
"Once someone throws a plastic bag in the ocean, that's a prob¬lem. But those bags could easily be recycled, and if you can make polyethylene into a sneaker or a hoodie, it would make economic sense to pick up these bags and recycle them," says Svetlana Boriskina, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering.
The findings were published in Nature Sustainability. |
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Self-cooling fibers and fabrics from polyethylene in CHEMICAL FIBERS INTERNATIONAL, Vol. 71, N° 3 (09/2021)
