PET Industry Overview, Manufacture and Properties

The second part of this series reviews current manufacturers of PET and how this material is used to make not just bottles but fibers, filaments, and sheet goods. PET manufacture is described using today’s reliance on petroleum and natural gas to new technologies capable of producing the required monomers through bio-synthetic pathways. Current polymerization processes are reviewed that are used to produce materials with sufficiently high molecular weight, or Intrinsic Viscosity (IV) for use in bottle manufacture. The criticality of IV, from how it is measured through its impact on preform and bottle manufacture is introduced.