Valorization of Textile Waste Into Bioenergy and Carbon‐Based Functional Materials

Abstract

The global textile industry’s rapid growth has accumulated vast, heterogeneous textile waste, posing environmental challenges while offering abundant, underutilized, carbon‐rich resources. This review comprehensively assesses recent advances in textile‐waste valorization for sustainable bioenergy production and synthesis of carbon‐based functional materials. The conversion efficiency, product yields, and practical limitations of biochemical conversion pathways, such as enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, anaerobic digestion (AD), and microbial fuel cells (MFCs), as well as thermochemical approaches, such as pyrolysis, gasification, and torrefaction, are critically evaluated. This work highlights the transformation of natural, synthetic, and blended textile waste into value‐added products such as biochar, graphitic carbon materials, syngas, and bio‐oil. This review systematically discusses how feedstock composition, processing conditions, activation strategies, and heteroatom doping dictate the resulting carbon structure, porosity, surface chemistry, electrical conductivity, and electrochemical properties. It highlights emerging applications of textile‐derived carbon materials in adsorption, catalysis, supercapacitors, rechargeable batteries, and electrocatalytic energy systems. By integrating energy recovery and advanced material synthesis, this work provides critical insights into how textile‐waste valorization advances circular economy (CE) principles, sustainable energy technologies, and next‐generation carbon‐based functional materials.