Unlike materials like iron, wool, and cotton, nylon doesn't exist in nature. So, nylon can only be made in a chemical plant. Different types of nylon comes from different kinds of carbon based chemicals. For example Zytel, comes from castor oil. Nylon is created through the reaction of two different molecules using moderate heat and pressure. One of the molecules used is adipic acid, and the other molecule is known as dicarboxylic acid. When these different acids combine, the make an even larger molecule and gives off water which as known as condensation polymerization. The large molecule that was formed by the combination of the other two acids is known as nylon-6,6 because the two molecules that combine to make nylon both have 6 carbon atoms. Different types of nylon are made using different types of chemicals. Most of the time, this process produces a giant sheet of nylon, which is then shredded into chips, which is then used in everyday plastic products.
Clothes that are made out of nylon aren’t made from chips of nylon, they are made from fibers of nylon. In order to create these fibers, they must melt the chips and putting them through a spinneret, which is a type of wheel or plate with lots of little holes in the plate. Nylon fiber size varies on the size of the hole in the spinneret. As you can see, the creation of nylon isn’t a easy process. It requires a lot of equipment, heat, and pressure. |
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