Air filter from recycled bio-based materials - BioReFil

The market for air purification applications is large and growing. This applies both to indoor climates, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19, and to the automotive industry where both drivers and electronics depend on good air quality. Many filter materials used today are based on fossil raw materials, which is unsustainable in the long run. This project aims to develop sustainable alternatives based on the reuse of textile materials and residual products from brewery processes and includes the entire value chain from raw material producers to end users.

Recycled textile materials are a so far underutilized resource. Largely because the recycling processes are still under development and also because areas of use have not been established. In this project, cellulose material produced via ShareTex's process were used, where the fibers are purified from textiles via a unique method. 

Brewer's spent grain is a residual product from the brewing of beer, which is produced annually in large quantities. In a previous project, RISE has shown that combinations of brewer's spent grain from Oppigårds Bryggeri AB and cellulose fibers from paper pulp can produce structurally sustainable fiber materials on a laboratory scale, where the particles of brewer's spent grain form an important component for the strength and durability of the material.

The combination of cellulose from textile materials and brewer's spent grain was investigated and refined in this project. Based on these results, scale-up of the materials were carried out in a foaming test bed at MoRe Research in Örnsköldsvik. There materials in sizes useful for the industry were produced in semi-continous fashion. These materials were tested and evaluated by RISE in laboratory environment and by Racoon Miljöfilter AB in relevant environments, and found to be promising for their applications.