Process for manufacturing nonwoven web material

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9540746-B2
Application number	US-201314069843-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 1, 2013
Priority date	Nov 1, 2013
Publication date	Jan 10, 2017
Grant date	Jan 10, 2017

Abstract

A nonwoven web material including fibers formed of a polyolefin and a polyester is disclosed. The fibers may include fine fibers produced by, for example, a meltblowing process. The polyolefin may be polypropylene and the polyester may be polylactic acid. The polylactic acid may be obtained and included by recycling scrap nonwoven material containing a polylactic acid component, hydrolyzing the polylactic acid component to reduce its viscosity, blending the hydrolyzed polylactic acid with a polyolefin resin, and melt-spinning the blended material to form fibers. A related process is disclosed.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A process for manufacturing a nonwoven web including recycled material, comprising the steps of:
spinning spunbond fibers comprising polylactic acid and polypropylene, and accumulating the spunbond fibers to form a first deposited layer;
spinning monocomponent fine fibers having an average diameter of 0.10 μm to 10 μm from meltblowing resin comprising virgin polypropylene resin, and accumulating the fine fibers to form a second deposited layer;
joining the first deposited layer and the second deposited layer to form a layer combination;
calender bonding the layer combination to form a nonwoven web;
collecting scrap material comprising portions of the nonwoven web;
mechanically dividing the scrap material;
hydrolyzing polylactic acid contained in the divided scrap material to form recyclable scrap material;
blending the recyclable scrap material with the meltblowing resin during said fine fibers spinning step, and thereby recycling the scrap material.

2. The process of claim 1 , wherein the spunbond fibers spinning step further comprises spinning bicomponent spunbond fibers, wherein polylactic acid forms a first fiber component and polypropylene forms a second fiber component.

3. The process of claim 2 wherein the bicomponent spunbond fibers have a core/sheath configuration wherein a core section thereof comprises polylactic acid.

4. The process of claim 1 further comprising the step of vis-breaking polypropylene contained in the scrap material prior to said blending step.

Assignees

• Procter & Gamble

Inventors

• Ashraf Arman
• Gorley Ronald Thomas

Classifications

• B32B2307/7265

  Non-permeable · CPC title

• B32B2555/00

  Personal care · CPC title

• B32B2262/12

  Conjugate fibres, e.g. core/sheath or side-by-side · CPC title

• B32B5/26

  another layer {next to it} also being fibrous or filamentary {(relative arrangement of fibres or filaments of different layers B32B5/12)} · CPC title

• D01D1/00

  Treatment of filament-forming or like material (working of plastics or substances in a plastic state, in general B29) · CPC title