In this series we move on to talk about the base material of wipes and look at the types of fibres found in wipes.
Take a packet of wipes from your kitchen, dressing table or nursing room, peel back the packaging and you'll get a bunch of fabric pieces. This fabric looks like tissue paper, but feels softer. You pick up a piece, stretch it and feel a hint of elasticity against your stretch; it doesn't tear easily.
The unbreakable fabric mentioned above has good absorbency, elasticity, softness and strength and is what we call SPUN-LACE: the most common non-woven fabric used in wet wipes.
Spunlace Non-Woven Fabric of Wet Towel
To get a good understanding of spunlace, you need to know what a nonwoven is, because spunlace is an important type of nonwoven.
The hydroentanglement process is a non-woven manufacturing system that uses a column of water to entangle the fibres and thus provide fabric integrity.
In short, hydroentanglement is
(1) A composite of different fibres
(2) a type of non-woven fabric based on its manufacturing technology.
The following is a list of typical fibre types in wet wipes and their properties
These plastic fibres are produced by extruding a molten polymer through small holes. They are widely used in the production of wet wipes as they are known for having good strength. The disadvantage of these fibres is that they are poorly absorbent due to their natural hydrophobic nature.
Spunlace Non-Woven Fabric of Wet Towel
Both of these fibres are made from wood or bamboo pulp and therefore come from renewable raw materials. They naturally have good absorbency and strength properties and are known for their softness. They are often used in applications where they prevent skin irritation.
The main types of wood pulp are softwood and hardwood; they are 3 mm and 1 mm in length respectively. They have a high surface area and a flat ribbon form, which gives them good cleaning properties. They also have good absorption properties, but have the disadvantage of being poor in strength.
The fibre length of cotton varies considerably with each seed, from 3 mm to 30 mm. It has better absorbency and water absorption than viscose, but it does not have the same softness. Thanks to its flat, ribbon-like surface, cotton is known for its good cleaning properties.
The most common hydroentangled fibre combination used in wet wipes applications is PET + VISCOSE. in fact, with the current developments in hydroentangled nonwovens technology, we have adopted some new hydroentangled techniques to produce wood pulp hydroentangled fabrics, which are becoming increasingly popular and are seen as an alternative to some common hydroentangled fabrics, which are available in two types.
These wood pulp nonwovens are more economical as an alternative substrate to hydroentangled wipers.
You will find that wipes made from just one type of fibre are very rare. Due to the different properties of the fibres, they are blended together in different proportions depending on the situation at hand. Household wipes need more absorbency and strength than softness.
