Publication

Abstract : The credit of finding that alcohols and carboxylic acids can be mixed successfully in fabrication of fibers goes to W. H. Carothers, who was working for DuPont at the time and unfortunately when he discovered Nylon, polyester took a back seat. Carothers’s incomplete research had not advanced to investigating the polyester formed from mixing ethylene glycol (EG) and terephthalic acid (TPA). It was the two British scientists--Whinfield and Dickson who patented PET in 1941. Later that year, the first polyester fiber - Terylene - was synthesized by Whinfield and Dickson along with Birtwhistle and Ritchiethey. Terylene was first manufactured by Imperial Chemical Industries or ICI. PET forms the basis of synthetic fibers like Dacron, Terylene and polyesters. DuPont's polyester research lead to a whole range of trademarked products, one example is Mylar (1952), an extraordinarily strong PET fiber that grew out of the development of Dacron in the early 1950s. The industrial production of polyesters involves three steps: 1. Condensation Polymerization: When acid and alcohol are reacted in vac-uum, at high temperatures condensation polymerization takes place. After the polymerization, the material is extruded onto a casting trough in the form of ribbon. Upon cooling, the ribbon hardens and is cut into chips.