Nonwoven Shredding: Turning Waste into Resource

A nonwoven web forming process that disperses fibers into a fast-moving air stream and condenses them onto a moving screen by means of pressure or vacuum. This type of nonwoven material is typically used in dry and wet wipes, household products, and absorbent cores.

Term used when the essential part of the material’s composition can be identified as a nonwoven material. If the essential part cannot be identified, the term composite nonwoven is used when the mass of the nonwoven content is greater than the mass of any other component material. These are used in applications like insulation, medical drapes, and filtration.

Also known as “melt blowing”, this is a nonwoven web forming process that extrudes and draws molten polymer resins with heated, high velocity air to form fine filaments that are deposited onto a moving screen. In some ways, this process is similar to the spunbonded process, but melt blown fibers are much finer and generally measured in microns. Melt blowing is a spun laid process.

A spun laid technology in which the filaments have been extruded, drawn and laid on a moving screen to form a web. The term is often interchanged with “spun laid”, but the industry had conventionally adopted the spunbonded term to denote a specific web forming process. This is to differentiate this web forming process from the other two forms of the spun laid web forming, which are melt blown and flash spinning.

A common method of web bonding by using chemical agents, which may include adhesive resins and solvents. The most common method is resin bonding. Latex resins (adhesive) are applied to the web by a variety of methods: dipping the web into the latex and removing the excess. The resin is usually in a water-based solution, so this bonding process requires heat to remove the water to dry and set the binder into the fabric. This is sometimes referred to as “latex bonding”.