PET High Tenacity and Low Elongation Fibre Production Line

Nowadays lots of PET bottles are used daily and sent to the bin. Another name for PET is polyester. And the scientific definition for the Pet is described in here in WIKI: Polyester is a category of polymers that contain the ester functional group in every repeat unit of their main chain.^[1] As a specific material, it most commonly refers to a type called polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyesters include naturally occurring chemicals, in plants and insects, as well as synthetics such as polybutyrate. Natural polyesters and a few synthetic ones are biodegradable, but most synthetic polyesters are not. Synthetic polyesters are used extensively in clothing. Polyester is a synthetic polymer made of purified terephthalic acid (PTA) or its dimethyl ester dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and monoethylene glycol (MEG). 

As we know PET bottles are not biodegradable, so we need to recycle them or dispose of them properly. For the recycling of PET bottles, the new technology was developed lately, which helped in recycling this post consumed PET bottles to make man-made fibers like Recycled Polyester Staple Fibre. These fibers are then used to make non-woven carpets for auto-mobiles, making quilts, yarns, pillows etc. 

After bringing PET bottles to the PET Bottles recycling factory, in a bale form, they are opened and manually and contaminations like metals, PVC, stones are sorted manually. After cleaning from the contaminated parts PET bottles are crushed in the crusher to the particles in size 12-15 mm flakes and later washed with hot water with a chemical solution containing 2% solution of Sodium Hydroxide. This chemical ensures taking out glue from bottles and also cleaning them. The overall contaminations in PET flakes should not be more than 200 ppm. 

After that, these flakes are dried and taken to vacuum driers where surface moisture, as well as inherent moisture, is taken out and flakes become soft/crystallized & dried. Moisture held within the PET flakes it is known as inherent moisture. The Driers helps to reduce the inherent moisture to less than 200 ppm. 

Later these flakes go to the extruder for spinning. Spinneret are available to make either hollow or solid PSF of varying denier (1.2Den -33Den). Filaments coming out of spinning are collected in cans or bobbins. This completes the spinning. Hollow and Solid PSF can be treated to make Siliconized, conjugated, polyfill, harsh, bouncy, anti-static, anti-fungal. In second step these cans are taken to Creel area where many cans or bobbins are combined to make tow and stretched several times in a chemical hot bath to make fiber. These fibers are then dried and relaxed in a relaxer and cut in various cut length before bale packing.