About polyester fibers

Polyester fibers are one of the artificial fibers which are used for physical and mechanical specialties and provided having an application similar to cotton on one hand and limitation of natural resources and high price of cotton on the other hand, have witnessed the growth of production and high consuming in such a way that they’ve been able to replace cotton up to 8% or be used in mixture with cotton. Existence of vast oil and gas and petrochemical resources in our beloved country Iran, has made it possible to achieve low expense raw materials for this project which is a major advantage in comparison to countries such as China or European countries, which have to provide their raw material from Iran or The Middle East.  The beginning of production and creation of today polyester goes back to 1927 when American Carothers showed that it’s possible to provide polyester from glycol and divalent organic acid, but due to lowness of melting point and easy hydrolysis of the primitive polyester, his research that time considered mostly the polyamide. In 1939, other researches were also started by Winfield in Britain. In fact, today polyester which is one of the most important artificial fibers, is the result of Winfield and his assistance Dixon research, which was provided for the first time in the laboratory in 1941.

Before 1965, only Dimethyl terephthalate was being used for mass production of polyester but with purification of Terephthalic acid being made possible, this substance was also rose against Dimethyl terephthalate and consequently the production of polyester in the 60’s and 70’s increased considerably. Generally, human made fibers either artificial or recycled are being used in two ways of filament (continuous string) or discontinuous fibers. Features such asconsistency, high resistance against heat and elasticity, resistance against abrasion, sunlight, acids, alcohol, bleaches and most of the solvents, easy processing and being produced with low expense for the producers have led for polyester to dedicate the biggest share of the world market to itself. Most of the defects of the polyester such as weak resilience, not absorbing moistness, resistance against dyeability and producing electricity can be reformed by combining these fibers with other ones.