LCA of a coated textile: conventional production and new process developments

Authors
Gerbinet, Saïcha; Groslambert, Sylvie; Justin, Fraselle; Ghislad, Olivier; Bruneel, Jan; Léonard, Angélique

Abstract
The objective of this study is to determine how changes in production process could influence the environmental performances of coated textiles. This study is part of a GreenWin project, founded by the Walloon region in partnerships with SionFabrics, Interco, Centexbel and the University of Liège. Traditionally, the textile coated with polyurethane (PU) are made using N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent to dissolve the PU before its application on the textile. During the curing, the solvent is evaporated and the PU is coated. Nevertheless, small amount of DMF could stay in the products. As the DMF is known to be toxic, to avoid problem of indoor air quality, a process without DMF is under studied. There are several possibilities to substitute DMF that will be tested during this project. All these possibilities will be compared from a technical point of view but also from an environmental point of view for those that obtain sufficient technical properties. In a first step, the LCA has the objective to have a better understanding of the conventional product. Several difficulties have been encountered. First, as the plant is especially interconnected, the data collection was a real challenge. Then, there is no characterization factor for DMF in the used method, leading to difficulties to assess the toxicity categories. The presentation aims at presenting how these difficulties have been bypassed. Then, the challenges related to the new products and the data collection for them will be also detailed. The technical properties of the new product studied by LCA are equivalent to those of the conventional product, therefore, they could be used for the same applications allow a comparison of their environmental performances. Finally, traditional and newly developed products will be compared with special attention on how the previous mentioned difficulties should be considered for the results interpretation.