The lectorate Biobased Building Blocks and Products (BBBP) is one of the lectorates of MNEXT. These lectorates support companies in their ambitions to reduce the amount of textile waste produced in fashion industry. In this project, MNEXT started a project with MUD JEANS, a frontrunner in circular Demin. MUD Jeans takes back the used Jeans form their customers to recycle them into new fashion items such as sweaters. To increase the possibilities, the natural blue Demin colorant, Indigo needs to be removed from the yarn. MNEXT has taken up this research to decolor the Jeans with supercritical CO2. This new process needs to be optimized to lower the use of cosolvent and decrease the process time.
Goal of internship
“Optimize a decolorization process for Jeans with Supercritical CO2.”
The Project involves:
- Determine the “state of the art” supercritical extraction processes in literature that can be implemented in the process.
- Test process parameters such as temperature, pressure and the use of cosolvent for the efficiency of decolorization.
- Design a optimized process and determine the process and investment costs.
Practical information
Starting date: February 2025. The length of the assignment is 5 months.
Compensation: €350 per month
Location: Joint Research Centre Breda
The intern will be part of a research team supervised by Wim Gaakeer.
Desirable skills/qualities of the student
The student should be able to carry out research in scientific literature, experimental work at a chemical process lab (pilot plant supercritical extractor, CIE Lab, extraction). The preferred background is chemical engineering, however, chemistry or biochemistry are also possible.