Saturday, November 05, 2016

Carpet and Chemistry

We have been in need of new carpet for a long time. This year we bit the bullet, decided to stay home, and spent our annual travel budget on getting the entire house done.
We used a local family company rather than one of the big franchises. They had a great range and a good service ethic. Dad came out to do the measuring and quote, mum coordinated the business side of things and the two sons had the carpet laid in a (longish) day.
We looked for a product that was stain resistant, long wearing and had a good 'feel' and ended up with Redbookgreen™ from Feltex.
The carpet fibre is made from triexta which is a PTT polyester.
It is a copolymer of PDO and TDA or DMT. All are normally petro chemical based.
But the PDO in our carpet fibre was made from, wait for it, corn sugar.
The clever people at Dupont came up with a way of fermenting corn sugar with a genetically modified E coli bacteria to produce Bio-PDO™ from the renewable source.
Their brand name is DuPont™ Sorona®,
This is not too surprising as DuPont has discovered and commercialized many revolutionary fibers including nylon, rayon, Kevlar® and Nomex®.
Coming from a career in polymers, mainly polyurethanes, thermoplastics and synthetic rubber, and regularly visiting one of the largest corn producing states in the USA ie. South Dakota, I thought this was pretty fascinating.
The carpet looks lovely, by the way.

1 comment:

KrisR said...

LOVE our new carpet! I haven't gotten tired of the soft, squishy feel under my feet each morning. xo