Fabric (woven – knitted – or nonwoven textile or cloth – etc.) – Nonwoven fabric – Hydroentangled nonwoven fabric
Patent
1997-02-13
2000-03-14
Raimund, Christopher
Fabric (woven, knitted, or nonwoven textile or cloth, etc.)
Nonwoven fabric
Hydroentangled nonwoven fabric
442340, 442344, 442164, 442165, 442152, 442153, 4289033, D04H 146
Patent
active
060372826
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a nonwoven material produced by hydroentangling a fibre web.
Hydroentangling or spunlacing is a technique which was introduced in the 1970's, see e.g. CA patent No. 841,938. The method involves forming a fibre web, either dry-laid or wet-laid, whereafter the fibres are entangled, i.e. tangled together by means of very fine water-jets under high pressure. A plurality of rows of water-jets are directed at the fibre web which is supported by a moving wire (mesh). The entangled fabric is then dried. The fibres which are used in the material can be constituted by staple fibres, e.g. polyester, rayon, nylon, polypropylene and the like, by pulp fibres or by mixtures of pulp fibres and staple fibres. Spunlace materials can be produced cheaply and presents high absorption characteristics. Amongst other things they are used as drying materials for household or industrial use and as disposable materials within the field of health-care etc.
Increased environmental awareness has led to the fact that a sparing use of our natural resources in the form of raw materials and sources of energy etc. is more and more often viewed as being a matter of course. Recycling of paper fibres by collection of returned paper and textiles to charity collections has been known for a long time and is used commercially today for producing new products which function perfectly well.
Nonwoven waste of e.g. spunlace type can be recycled by melting it down into plastic granulate which can be used for production of new synthetic fibres. This presupposes that the waste is constituted by relatively "clean" synthetic material based on thermoplastic synthetic fibres. One example is recycling of polyester from bottles for producing polyester fibres which are used for carpet manufacture.
It is also known to mechanically shred nonwoven and textile waste and to use the freed recycled fibres. In this case, mixed waste comprising both synthetic and natural fibres can even be used. New materials for, for instance, sound insulation, filters and geotextiles can be produced from the recycled fibres by thermobinding, needling or adhesive binding.
A large portion of the production waste from nonwoven manufacture however presently goes to dumps as landfill or to waste incineration plants. Such production waste emanates from edge-trimming of the material webs, start-up waste and material which is discarded for various reasons. To the nonwoven waste is added used material as well as production waste.
OBJECT AND FEATURES OF THE INVENTION
The object of the present invention is to achieve a nonwoven material with good absorption characteristics and good quality in other aspects, where recycled fibres of the aforementioned type are utilised. This has been solved by the invention in that the material comprises recycled fibres with a fibre length of between 5 and 60 mm and a fineness of between 0.1 and 20 dtex, and which are constituted by fibres which have been mechanically freed from nonwoven waste, textile waste or the like, which fibres are mixed with each other and possibly with new fibres in a wet-formed, foam-formed, air-laid or dry-laid. fibre web which is hydroentangled with sufficient energy for forming a compact absorbent material.
The recycled fibres can be constituted by synthetic fibres, plant fibres, regenerated cellulose fibres or pulp fibres.
By the addition of a suitable binder via impregnation, spraying, application of a coat or the like, certain properties such as wet strength and dry strength of the material can be additionally improved.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The raw material fibre for the recycled fibres can be constituted partly by production waste in the form of edge-trimming waste, start-up waste and by other unused discarded material. It can also be constituted by other waste in the form of used fibre-based materials such as nonwoven and textiles (both woven and knitted). Such material may need to undergo certain cleaning stages, depending on the degree of contamination.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4100324 (1978-07-01), Anderson et al.
patent: 4879170 (1989-11-01), Radwanski et al.
patent: 4931355 (1990-06-01), Radwanski et al.
Holm Ulf
Lammers Gerhard
Milding Ebbe
Raimund Christopher
SCA Hygiene Paper AB
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