Understanding Non-woven Fabric and Its Cleaning

Understanding non-woven fabric

Non-woven fabric does not require weaving, knitting, or yarn. It uses the direct or random arrangement of fibers to form a network structure, and then strengthens it through mechanical, thermal bonding, or chemical methods. Environmentally friendly materials are called non-woven fabric because of their appearance and certain properties.

According to the production process, it can be divided into:

• Spunlaced non-woven fabric: The spunlacing process is to spray high-pressure fine water jets on one or multiple layers of fiber webs, so that the fibers intertwine with each other, strengthen the fiber web, and have a certain strength.

• Thermal bonded non-woven fabric: It refers to adding fibrous or powdery thermally-melted bonding reinforcement materials to the fiber web, and then heating and melting the fiber web to cool and strengthen the fabric.

• Pulp airflow forming non-woven fabric: Airflow forming non-woven fabric can also be called dustless paper, dry paper-making non-woven fabric. It uses airflow forming technology to loosen wood pulp fiber boards into single fiber state, and then uses airflow to condense the fibers on the screen, and then consolidate the fiber web into fabric.

• Wet-laid non-woven fabric: Wet-laid non-woven fabric uses fiber raw materials to loosen into single fibers in an aqueous medium, and at the same time mix different fiber raw materials to make fiber suspension slurry, which is then transported to the web forming mechanism. The fibers are networked in a damp state, and then merged into fabric.

• Polyester spunbond nonwoven fabric: After the polymer is extruded and stretched to form continuous filaments, the filaments are laid into webs, and the webs are then made into non-woven fabric through self-adhesive, thermal bonding, chemical bonding, or mechanical reinforcement.

• Meltblown non-woven fabric: The process of meltblown non-woven fabric includes polymer feeding, melt extrusion, fiber formation, fiber cooling, web formation, and fabric reinforcement.

• Needle-punched non-woven fabric: Needle-punched non-woven fabric is a type of dry-laid non-woven fabric. Needle-punching non-woven fabric strengthens the fluffy fiber web into fabric using fluffy needles.

Can non-woven fabric be washed?

Although non-woven fabric is not actually fabric, it can be washed if it is not too dirty, but it cannot be machine-washed or vigorously rubbed. It can only be gently rubbed and rinsed by hand. After washing, it should be quickly dried and blown dry. The temperature during drying and blowing should be low, not too high, because non-woven fabric is prone to decomposition after soaking in water for a long time. Do not use bleach or fluorescent laundry products to prevent discoloration of non-woven fabric. Do not use a brush to clean non-woven fabric, as the surface of non-woven fabric is prone to fuzzing and can look unattractive. After cleaning, place the non-woven fabric in a cool and ventilated place to dry. Non-woven fabric is a new generation of environmentally friendly materials with advantages such as recyclability, environmental protection, and low cost. Therefore, when non-woven fabric gets dirty, it can be cleaned and reused.