TEXTILES.ORG
Voith Paper and Trützschler Nonwovens recently reached an important milestone: a nonwovens fabric from the jointly developed production process successfully passed the official INDA and EDANA test, and became certified as “flushable.” For the producers, this has been a small but economically interesting market segment up to now, with high demands on the product. On one hand, the cloths must be strong enough for cleaning; on the other, they must not pollute the sewage system or the environment after disposal.
Voith and Trützschler Nonwovens have been successful in producing wet laid and hydroentangled nonwovens with a high level of wet strength, consisting only of fibers of natural origin that quickly disperse in water, and that are 100 percent biodegradable.
The raw material used is exclusively cellulose, the main component is bleached long fiber pulp as used in paper manufacturing. A small percentage of viscose fibers spun from cellulose ensures the strength of the nonwovens. The newly developed production process uses neither binding agents nor melt fibers. For this reason, the cloths quickly disperse in water, and the fiber material biodegrades. Another advantage of the large quantities of long fiber pulp is significantly reduced production costs.
The certificate is an impressive example of the efficiency of the newly developed production process, whose core components are the Voith’s HydroFormer for web formation, and the Trützschler Nonwovens’ AquaJet for web bonding.
Trützschler is a textile machinery manufacturer that specializes in machines, installations and accessories for spinning preparation, nonwovens and man-made fiber industry. Trützschler Nonwovens is part of Trützschler Nonwovens & Man-Made Fibers GmbH. Voith Paper is a division of the Voith Group operating worldwide.