Methods and systems for recycling carpet and carpets manufactured from recycled material
AssigneeColumbia Insurance Company
InventorsJeffrey Wright, Kellie Ballew
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present invention pertains to carpet and methods of making and recycling carpet. In one aspect, the carpet includes: a primary backing which has a face and a back surface; a plurality of fibers attached to the primary backing and extending from the face of the primary backing and exposed at the back surface of the primary backing; an adhesive composition backing; and an optional secondary backing adjacent to the adhesive backing. The method of making carpet includes extrusion coating the adhesive composition onto the back surface of a primary backing to form the adhesive composition backing. The method of recycling carpet can recover one or more polymeric carpet components.
Claims23
A method of making a carpet, comprising the steps of:
- providing a greige good comprised of a primary backing and a plurality of carpet fibers, the plurality of carpet fibers penetrating a bottom surface of the primary backing and protruding therefrom a top surface of the primary backing;
- providing an adhesive polymer composition comprising a recycled polymer composition, wherein the recycled polymer is reclaimed from a carpet by a method comprising:
- a) contacting a carpet with a solvent system comprising a terpene;
- b) dissolving at least of a portion of the polymer composition in the solvent system to provide a solution of terpene and a dissolved polymer;
- and
- c) separating terpene from the solution of terpene and the dissolved polymer to provide the reclaimed polymer composition;
- and
- applying the adhesive polymer composition to the bottom surface of the primary backing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.