Advanced manufacturing system to recycle carpet
AssigneeXt Green, Inc.
InventorsXinting Tian, Gail Brice, Lorence Moot, Frank Lu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An advanced manufacturing plant and process to efficiently deconstruct and recycle post-consumer carpet primarily in an aqueous environment. The water-based technology substantially eliminates airborne particulate emissions into the workplace and the environment. It also significantly increases the quality and quantity of the resources recovered from the carpet. In addition to recycling residential carpet, it also reclaims and recycles material from commercial broadloom carpet.
Claims16
A carpet recycling plant for separating first and second fibers from a carpet, the first and second fibers having different specific gravities, the plant comprising:
- the carpet having the first and second fibers;
- a shredder for gross size reduction of the carpet in a dry state to a size having a surface area greater than 2 square inches defining a gross size reduced carpet;
- a liquid based carpet reducing system filled with liquid which receives the gross size reduced carpet from the shredder to break down the gross size reduced carpet into mixed fibers of the first and second fibers and form a slurry of the mixed first and second fibers;
- a fiber separator receiving the slurry of mixed first and second fiber from the liquid based carpet reducing system;
- wherein before any further size reduction of the gross size reduced carpet under 2 square inches, the gross size reduced carpet including the mixed first and second fibers remain wet until the mixed first and second fibers are separated through the fiber separator.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.