WOLKITE UNIVERSITY

College Of Engineering And Technology

Textile Engineering Department
Concept note on Title;
Developing and characterizing Artificial silk / Rayon fiber
from waste of Ethiopian traditional clothes.
By: Sisay (PI), M.Sc. in Textile manufacturing
Mikael Jima (co-author), M.Sc. in Textile material science
2022
Wolkite, Ethiopia
 Research Summary
• Optimal use of natural resources and utilization of recyclable
wastes are getting more and more essential day by day since
recycling wastes have both economic and environmental
advantage.
• From the point of textile manufacturing, various production wastes
can be reused or recycled in textile industry.
• It’s known that in a country like Ethiopia, Cotton is the best suitable
fiber for apparel production, especially for traditional clothing.
• However, a lack of strength and durability make literally all
Ethiopian traditional clothes easily to wear out and disposed as a
waste.
 Cont . . .
• Most of the time those waste use to clean home or other materials
which is uneconomical comparing to the prices of the clothes.
• Therefore, it’s important to find an optimal & economical waste
management technique for Ethiopian traditional apparel.
• In a textile material science, it’s possible to modify or convert
cellulosic fiber in to other fibers known as regenerated fiber. Rayon
/ Artificial silk is one of them.
• Hence the aim of this research is to investigate and design the
possible chemical recipes & process to recycle an Ethiopian
traditional clothing wastes by converting in to a spinable
regenerated fiber called Rayon/Artificial silk.
How to make rayon from cotton fiber? (short lab video)
 Objectives
General objective:
• The main objective of this research is to develop & characterize
Rayon/Artificial silk fiber from wastes of Ethiopian traditional clothes.
Specific objectives:
• To design and prepare an optimal chemical recipes for viscous
solutions preparation
• To design and develop a suitable spinret techniques
• To develop the rayon/artificial silk fiber
• To apply textile Finishing on the developed fiber
• To test and analyze the developed fiber
 Statement of the problem
• Every being in this world has an expiration date, even the world itself
possibly has one.
• This situation is the same for Textile products too.
• We produce them, use them, and try to find a way to get rid of them,
when the time comes.
• One of the hardest questions of today comes to mind at this point:
• How will we manage the resultant waste of the products we created?
• Should we dump the waste to proper waste yards and reuse or
recycle them?
• The answers to these questions are crucial.
 Cont . . .
• It’s obvious that the demand and the productions of Ethiopian
traditional clothes are dramatically rising even if it faces several
challenges like high production cost & time, low durability & stain
resistance and exaggerated price in the market.
• But those and others challenges are not surprisingly declining the
demands of the products due to the emerging of a talented
entrepreneurs & designers in the market.
• And also, modernizing & customizing every traditional clothes
according to individual interests & occasions are both making the
product to preferable nowadays allover Ethiopia.
 Cont . . .
• But, for many reasons (i.e. the physical properties of the yarn used,
the density of the thread on the fabric, lack of a necessary finishing’s,
etc.) those traditional clothes are not durable and only used for a few
period of time comparing to those modern clothes.
• Hence this make the consumer to buy more and more new traditional
clothes within a short period of time and replace the old one which is
extracted as a waste.
• And most of the time this waste clothes are used at home for cleaning
purpose or to make pillow and mattress which is uneconomical.
• So, there must be an optimal and economical method to manage and
recycle those traditional waste clothes; which is the purpose of this
research.
 Significant of study
• The most crucial problem of Ethiopian traditional clothes is its lack
of durability. And in another word this means creating a massive
amount of waste in short period of time.
• Thus this research will help us to manage wastes by converting the
entire fabric waste in to a bundles of fiber called Rayon/Artificial
silk which is most valuable and advantageous to produce a new
textile product than the previous waste management.
• This research will also help to prevent our country from spending a
foreign currency to import rayon fiber from overseas.
• And also will be the source of foreign currency by producing and
exporting the fiber.
Research plan and timeline of the study

• Developing rayon/artificial silk fiber from waste cotton fabric will

take a bit long steps which is started from preparing recipe and
developing fiber up to testing the final product/outcome weather
its effective or not.
• So, this research may take around eight (8) months.
 Budget Summaries

• The estimated cost of this research is around three hundred

thousand (300,000.00) of Ethiopian birr, depending on the current
market.
• So, it might vary (lower or higher) than estimated cost following to
the upcoming market price.
Thank you