LEEDS, England — October 7, 2019 — Now in its 23rd year, the Nonwovens Network has pulled together a strong program for its 2019 annual seminar, which will be held at the John Smith’s Stadium in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, on December 5.

Keynote speakers at the event, entitled “Futureproofing the Nonwovens Industry,” will be Mark Cotton, managing director of the John Cotton Group, and Seán Kerrigan, director of communications and media relations for EDANA, the Brussels-based European disposables and nonwovens association.

Seán Kerrigan’s presentation will focus on two key issues which have been occupying a lot of EDANA’s time over the past year — its Wipes Outreach program and the upcoming European Union single-use plastics directive.

Expansions

John Cotton is one of the U.K.’s most successful nonwovens operations with manufacturing sites in the U.K., Poland, China and Australia,

The company, which has more than 1,000 employees, has a weekly production capacity of more than 1,000 tons and has invested 30 million euros over the past three years on projects including a new R&D center in West Yorkshire. Bedding is the company’s biggest market and it produces around 10 million duvets and 20 million pillows annually. Mark Cotton will be addressing the issue of risk management in today’s volatile economy at the seminar.

Another U.K. success story is Autins, which specialises in NVH — noise, vibration and harshness — and thermal insulation solutions, primarily for the automotive industry.

Autins R&D manager Kathy Beresford will explain how the company has expanded considerably in recent years, with sales in 2018 of £29.2 million, and how it delivers some two million parts monthly to the leading car brands and other companies.

She will also provide details of the company’s latest operation, Solar Nonwovens, based in Tamworth, U.K., which represents a £4 million investment and is now producing the new Neptune acoustic absorbing products, based on hollow, grooved microfiber polyesters and polypropylenes made with a unique new technology.

A third U.K. success story is Texfelt, which has recently opened a brand-new £9 million facility in Bradford. Operations and technical director Michael Walsh will outline the company’s focus on expanding its range of recycled products for a range of industry sectors.

Posted October 7, 2019

Source: Nonwovens Network, School of Design, University of Leeds

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. — October 7, 2019 — Researchers at Tufts University School of Engineering have developed silk materials that can wrinkle into highly detailed patterns — including words, textures and images as intricate as a QR code or a fingerprint. The patterns take about one second to form, are stable, but can be erased by flooding the surface of the silk with vapor, allowing the researchers to “reverse” the printing and start again. In an article published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrate examples of the silk wrinkle patterns, and envision a wide range of potential applications for optical electronic devices.

The smart textile takes advantage of the natural ability of silk fiber proteins — fibroin — to undergo a change of conformation in response to external conditions, including exposure to water vapor, methanol vapor and ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Water and methanol vapor, for example, can soak into the fibers and interfere with hydrogen bond cross links in the silk fibroin, causing it to partially ‘unravel’ and release tension in the fiber. Taking advantage of this property, the researchers fabricated a silk surface from dissolved fibroin by depositing it onto a thin plastic membrane (PDMS). After a cycle of heating and cooling, the silk surface of the silk/PDMS bilayer folds into nanotextured wrinkles due to the different mechanical properties of the layers.

Exposing any part of that wrinkled surface to water or methanol vapor causes the fibers to relax and the wrinkles to flatten. The smooth surface transmits more than 80 percent of light, while the wrinkled surface only allows 20 percent or less through, creating a visible contrast and the perception of a printed pattern. The surface can be selectively exposed to vapor using a patterned mask, resulting in a matched pattern in the textured silk. Patterns may also be created by depositing water using inkjet printing. The resolution of this printing method is determined by the resolution of the mask itself, or the nozzle diameter of the inkjet printer.

Alternatively, use of UV creates a virtual mask, since UV exposed parts of the silk surface become less permeable to water or methanol and remain wrinkled when treated with vapor, while the parts not exposed to UV absorb the vapor and flatten out. The printed pattern reflects the pattern of UV light exposed to the silk surface.

After erasing a pattern with vapor, the textured silk can be regenerated with a cycle of heating and cooling. The authors demonstrated the ability to print patterns over at least 50 cycles, without any diminishment in contrast or resolution.

“We can print patterns of remarkably high resolution in the silk — and we even showed that we can pick up the moisture pattern left by a fingerprint,” said Yu Wang, post-doctoral fellow in the Tufts University School of Engineering, and first author of the study. “But beyond the novelty of reversible printing, there are many other functional applications that the silk patterning technology could provide.”

The list of potential applications that Wang points to include materials with tunable optical properties, some of which may involve the use of dopants that allow the patterned fabric to absorb or emit different wavelengths of light and energy, or exhibit patterns only from specific angles; and materials that modulate their thermal properties, changing the amount of heat they let through. Due to the biocompatibility of the silk fibers, the micropatterning material could be used in various biomedical applications.

The study also demonstrated how the patterns could be switched on and off at will by connecting the bilayer to a small electrical heating element, transitioning the silk between wrinkled and wrinkle-free states.

“Because of its versatility, and ease of manufacture, I think there may be many future applications that we and others will come up with that we have not even imagined yet,” said Fiorenzo Omenetto, corresponding author and the Frank C. Doble Professor of Engineering at Tufts’ School of Engineering.

Other authors on the paper were: Beom Joon Kim, post-doctoral fellow and Berney Peng, Wenyi Li, Yuqi Wang, and Meng Li, graduate students in the Silk Lab at Tufts University School of Engineering.

The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research (grant #N00014-13-1-0596).

Wang, Y., Beom, J.K., Peng, B., Li, W., Wang, Y., Li, M. & Omenetto, F. “Silk wrinkles: controlling structural protein conformation for dynamic, responsive, multifunctional micropatterns.” PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1911563116

Posted October 7, 2019

Source: Tufts University

NORTH CHESTERFIELD, Va. — October 3, 2019 — As part of a joint effort with Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), Verdex Technologies has developed technology that can take recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) carpet and bottles and turn them into an array of apparel and textile products for a variety of high-value markets.

This disruptive technology enables the apparel industry and associated businesses alike, to play a vital role in solving the ever-growing problem of landfilling carpet and ocean plastic. Verdex’s patented spinning nozzle technology converts post-consumer carpet (PCC) material directly into nano/microfibers which are blended with larger fibers to form products for the apparel and textile markets. Verdex technology is capable of spinning recycled cleaned PET carpet containing polypropylene and calcium carbonate components. This technology has massive potential in the performance apparel market due the nanofibers producing a much stronger moisture vapor transmission rate (MVTR) compared to competing products on the market.

The vast majority of carpets are sent to landfills each year, and only around 10 percent are reused or recycled. In California it is now about 18 percent, hopefully going to 24 percent as mandated by the state. This ever growing number represents 2 percent by weight of American landfill waste, totalling almost 4 billion pounds per year.

“Verdex recycling technology can help alleviate this major problem by taking post-consumer carpet and bottles, and turning these into high value nanofiber media for our customers to enhance existing products or create whole new product lines,” said Damien Deehan Co-CEO at Verdex Technologies. “We want to make a real impact in contributing to the circular economy. Verdex recycling technology offers its customers a unique opportunity to adopt a recycling element into their finished products, making it good for the environment, our customers and the end user.”

Verdex patented technology is a simple, safe process for spinning nanofibers using no solvents — only low pressure air. This provides nonwoven manufacturers the capability to offer a wide variety of functional enhancements to their products containing nanofibers. The Verdex process can also spin nanofibers using polymers such as polycaprolactone (PCL), polylactic acid (PLA), polypropylene (PP), polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), nylon 66, and possible others if melt viscosity is low. The Verdex Process delivers nanofibers in a single step process, which can also incorporate functional particles such as super absorbent powder and activated carbon.

Verdex is currently scaling its core nanofiber technology to a 1 meter commercial line, with its new facility being headquartered in Atlanta. The Atlanta facility will also house Verdex’s Laboratory scale line, which is available for customers to run tests for new product innovation and development. Verdex is now developing relationships with companies, industries and markets that can benefit from its very unique technologies.

Posted October 7, 2019

Source: Verdex Technologies