Due to the immature material sorting technology, the used clothes are mainly sorted manually, which is often time-consuming, and the quality is not stable enough to provide fiber recycling manufacturers, so there is still a gap in textile resources. With the development of waste textile material quantitative identification technology and the establishment of operation mode, the gap can be filled to avoid environmental problems caused by waste clothes. This project develops quantitative identification technology for waste textile materials and establishes an operation mode to complete the identification of six fiber materials: polyester fiber, nylon, cotton, wool, acrylic, and rayon. The identification accuracy reaches 99%, and the identification speed 1,100~1,350 pieces/hour. In the automatic discharge system, the average time of air discharge is about 2.4 seconds/piece. Through the field verification, the local innovative textile automatic sorting technology has been established, which can effectively reduce the labor burden and improve the efficiency of classification and the effectiveness of recycling. Recycled materials can be verified by Global Recycled Standard (GRS) or Recycled Claim Standard (RCS). It is urgent to establish a relevant management system for used clothing recyclers. This project completes the establishment of local innovative textile automatic sorting technology, and improves the time-consuming situation of manual sorting, promotes the effective sorting of used clothes, and improves the quality of sorting. Recycled materials can be verified through GRS or RCS to facilitate value-added. It is necessary to encourage used clothing recycling companies to establish relevant management systems and promote the transformation of used clothing recycling industry. In the future, this technology can be applied to professional sorting factories or used clothing recyclers to further fine classification, connecting the upstream, midstream, and downstream of the textile industry to form a closed textile circulation circle, to improve the material value and create a sustainable textile cycle.

Textile Recycling, Fiber Identification, NIR Technology