China will look to hogwash to increase its availability of polyester, the government-controlled China National Apparel and Textile Council (CNTEX) reported in mid-September.
No doubt many of our more cynical readers thought hogwash is simply an accurate description of the uncritically regurgitated Party propaganda CNTEX often specialises in. But hogwash is also the word for waste edible oil, which can have been recycled from restaurants or extracted from sewers.
Fermented, hogwash can be lethal if re-used for cooking. But a research programme at Donghua University is now producing tonnes of 1, 3–propanediol from the fermented product. This is a precursor of polyester, and the consortium sponsoring the research now believes, according to CNTEX, that an entirely biologically-derived production chain can be developed for polyester, allowing yarn to be made from renewable resources.
CNTEX has no estimate at present of the resources needed to drive the process, or of the real likely costs in running it.
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