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US 5,288,349 AGranted
Carpet and techniques for making and recycling same
AssigneeTennessee Valley Performance Products, Inc.
InventorWilbert E. Fink
Life of this patent
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AssigneeTennessee Valley Performance Products, Inc.
InventorWilbert E. Fink
Estimating the term…
The disclosure relates to a carpet, a process for manufacturing a carpet and a method for recycling a carpet. The carpet of the present disclosure includes a primary backing having tufts of synthetic carpet fibers protruding from a top surface and, optionally, a secondary backing, with an extruded sheet of an isotactic polyolefin polymer between and integrally fused to a bottom surface of the primary backing and an upper surface of the secondary backing. The process for manufacturing the recyclable carpet includes contacting the extruded sheet with the primary backing and, optionally, the secondary backing, at a temperature sufficiently high to integrally fuse the extruded sheet to the respective backing. The method for recycling synthetic carpet of the type described includes manufacturing the carpet, collecting portions of the carpet, and melting the collected portions to make a feedstock.
A method for manufacturing a carpet comprising (a) fixing tufts of carpet fibers to a primary backing so that the tufts protrude from the top surface of the primary backing to form a tufted base (b) extruding a heated sheet of thermoplastic isotactic polymer, (c) continuously contacting a lower surface of said tufted base with said heated sheet, and (d) integrally fusing at least one of the primary backing or tufts to said heated sheet of thermoplastic isotactic polymer.
The process for manufacturing a carpet as claimed in claim 11, further comprising contacting a secondary backing with said extruded sheet at a temperature sufficiently high to integrally fuse said extruded sheet to a top surface of said secondary backing.
A method for manufacturing a carpet comprising (a) fixing tufts of carpet fibers to a primary backing so that the tufts protrude from the top surface of the primary backing and (b) integrally fusing at least one of the primary backing or tufts to a crystalline thermoplastic polymer sheet by contacting the sheet and the tufts or primary backing at sufficiently high temperature to cause the fusing.
A method for manufacturing a carpet comprising (a) fixing tufts of isotactic polypropylene carpet fibers to an isotactic polypropylene primary backing so that the tufts protrude from the top surface of the primary backing to form a tufted base, (b) extruding a heated sheet of an isotactic polypropylene polymer, (c) continuously contacting a lower surface of said tufted base with said heated sheet and (d) integrally fusing at least one of the primary backing or tufts to said heated sheet of thermoplastic polymer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.