Life+GreenWoolF aims to a large scalerecycle of waste wools into organic nitrogen fertilisers, through a green, sustainable conversion process.
Waste wool will be treated with superheated water, without expensive and pollutant preliminary scouring operations, since it contains in the raw state also materials such as potassium salts, lipids, carbohydrates.
The hydrolysis will be tailored so as to obtain different proportions of fast/slow release nutrients: amino acids (fast release) and residual partially hydrolysed fibres (slow release) with the elements being released over time as the fibres decomposed. This, together with wool’s ability to retain water and act as an ion exchanger, absorbing excess ions to reduce the run-off of nutrients into waterways (McNeil, S.J.; Sunderland, M. R.; Zaitseva, L. I. “Closed-loop wool carpet recycling”, Resources, Conservation & Recycling 51(1), (2007), 220-224). The product of the hydrolysis will be dried and used as amendment-fertilizer for grasslands and other cultivation purposes (Górecki, R. S.; Górecki, M. T. “Utilization of Waste Wool as Substrate Amendment in Pot Cultivation of Tomato, Sweet Pepper, and Eggplant”,Polish J. of Environ. Stud. Vol. 19, No. 5 (2010), 1083-1087).
