Wet-Laid process to produce a bound nonwoven article

A wet-laid process to produce a bound nonwoven article, said wet-laid process comprising:

• (a) melt spinning multicomponent fibers comprising at least one water dispersible sulfopolyester and one or more water non-dispersible polymers immiscible with said sulfopolyester, wherein said multicomponent fibers have a striped configuration and an as-spun denier of less than 15 dpf;
• (b) cutting said multicomponent fibers into cut multicomponent fibers having a length of less than 25 millimeters;
• (c) contacting said cut multicomponent fibers with water to remove said sulfopolyester thereby forming a wet lap comprising cut water non-dispersible fibers, wherein said cut water non-dispersible fibers are formed of a thermoplastic polycondensate, wherein said cut water non-dispersible fibers comprise ribbon fibers having a transverse aspect ratio of at least 2:1 and not more than 100:1;
• (d) transferring said wet lap to a wet-laid nonwoven zone to produce an unbound nonwoven article;
• and
• (e) applying a binder dispersion comprising at least one sulfopolyester binder to said nonwoven article;
• wherein said sulfopolyester binder contains substantially equimolar proportions of acid moiety repeating units (100 mole percent) to hydroxy moiety repeating units (100 mole percent), wherein said sulfopolyester binder comprises repeating units of components (i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) as follows, wherein all stated mole percentages are based on the total of all acid and hydroxy moiety repeating units being equal to 200 mole percent:
• i. at least 50 mole percent and not more than 99 mole percent of isophthalic acid,
• ii. at least 1 mole percent and not more than 50 mole percent of 5-sulfoisophthalic acid,
• iii. at least 20 mole percent and not more than 95 mole percent of 1,4-cyclohexanedimethanol, and
• iv. at least 5 mole percent and not more than 80 mole percent of diethylene glycol and/or ethylene glycol.