Recovery of cotton fibers from waste Blue-Jeans and its use in polyester concrete

Currently, the consumer tendency causes that the garments are dismissed more quickly, which generate increment of textile waste, such as Blue-Jeans. In this work, polyester concrete with waste cotton fibers was elaborated, and a novel treatment by gamma irradiation was carried out. The results show up to 40% improvement on the compressive strength, as well as 7% on the flexural strength. Additional improvements for irradiated concrete were obtained, when 300 kGy of irradiation dose was applied. Modifications on the surface, chemical structural and crystallinity of irradiated waste cotton fibers, were related with improvements on the mechanical properties of concrete.