IN-JEAN-IOUS DISCOVERY

JEANS worn out at the knees could be used to repair worn out knees, thanks to an injean-ious discovery by Australian scientists paving the way for denim to be transformed into artificial cartilage for knee reconstructions.

Researchers at Deakin University have discovered how to dissolve denim and turn it into an “aerogel”, which might be used as artificial cartilage.

The denim recycling discovery — by the Institute for Frontier Materials and Deakin’s School of Engineering — not only provides a potential new material for knee reconstructions, but could also help solve the global problem of textile waste.

Deakin scientist Nolene Byrne said the process worked because denim was made from cotton, a natural polymer made of cellulose.

Liquid solvents were used on waste denim, dissolving it and allowing it to be regenerated into aerogel, Dr Byrne said.

The stickiness of the denim cellulose solution was what made it ideally suited for use as synthetic cartilage, she said.

“That’s exactly what cartilage looks like — you can’t 3D print that material — and now we can shape and tune the aerogel to manipulate the size and distribution of the tunnels to make the ideal shape,” she said.

Aerogel was a low density material that could be used not only to make artificial cartilage but also for water filtration and as a separator in advanced battery technology, Dr Byrne said.

Wren Greene, from Deakin’s Institute for Frontier Materials, who helped test the aerogel as artificial cartilage, said similarities between the two were extraordinary.

“The remarkable similarity in the pore network structure of these aerogels and cartilage tissues — even down to the dimensions, orientations and density distribution of pore channels — enables these materials to replicate a special type of ‘weeping’ lubrication mechanism used by cartilage to protect against wear and damage,” Dr Greene said.

Dr Byrne said the project was entering pilot scale trials and would hopefully be operating on a commercial scale within three to five years, with industry support.

“These technologies really only advance if industry comes on board,” she said.

Knee replacement is a procedure that removes diseased parts of the bones forming the knee joint and replaces them with an artificial joint.

According to the Australian Orthopaedic Association’s 2017 annual report, more than 653,000 knee replacement surgeries were performed and reported to the National Joint Replacement Registry in 2016.

“This is an additional 60,903 knee procedures compared to the number reported last year,” the report states.