NEWBIE ALERT!!!

NEWBIE ALERT!!!

NEWBIE ALERT!!!

I'm calling a newbie alert so that the newbies in here don't get the impression that carpet is actually made from polyethylene.

Carpet is made out of three synthetic fibers; nylon, POLYESTER and Olefin.

The kind of polyester used to make carpet is called polyethylene terephthalate or (PET for short) because the plastic consists of repeating pairs of terephthalate groups bonded to ethylene groups like this:

-ethylene-terephthalate-ethylene-terephthalate-ethylene-terephthalate-

so, it's realy poly(ethylene-terephthalate), which is a totally different animal than polyethylene which looks like this:

-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-ethylene-

Poly(ethylene-tereaphthalate) is a polyester because each terephthalate group consists of a benzene ring with a carboxylate ester on each side and it's those ester groups that make PET a polyester.

poly(ethylene-terephthalate) is the plastic that soft drink bottles are made of, and much of the polyester carpet that's manufactured in the US today is made from recycled soft drink bottles.

http://chemsrv1.uwsp.edu/macrogcss/pet.html