Wet Laying Nonwoven Using Natural Cellulosic Fibers and Their Blends: Process and Technical Applications. A Review

Abstract

Wet laying is an emerging technique for the production of nonwoven using short natural cellulosic fibers and their blends unlike other nonwoven techniques that utilize chemicals and require a particular length of fibers for processing into nonwoven. The steps involved in wet laying are dispersion, deposition, and consolidation. Uniform dispersion is the key to attain defect-free nonwovens in web laying. It is similar to that of papermaking process with the difference in fiber length and density of the fibers in the process. The quality of the dispersion depends on material parameters such as fiber length, surfactant, nature of fibers, and linear density of the fibers and machine parameters such as dispersion time and mechanical agitation. The present paper summarizes the material and process parameters required for wet laying in detail along with the potential application of wet-laid nonwovens.

Keywords

• dispersion
• machine and process parameters
• nonwoven
• paper making
• short fibers
• wet lay