Application

Textiles

Fibre made into fabric — clothing, rope, carpet, sailcloth and reinforcement, and the second-largest destination for synthetic polymers.

A textile is a material that has been made into fibre and then into fabric, and the requirements are strange when written down: strong along its length, floppy across it, able to be bent a hundred thousand times without failing, and comfortable against skin.

For almost all of history the answers were biological — wool, cotton, flax, silk — and their properties were whatever the organism happened to provide. The synthetic fibres changed that by making the properties a design choice, and within a few decades took most of the market.

Uses

Clothing and furnishing, and beyond them a whole category the trade calls technical textiles: rope, webbing, sailcloth, conveyor belting, geotextile under roads, tyre cord, filter fabric, and the fibre reinforcement in composites.

What distinguishes a fibre from the same polymer in bulk is drawing. Stretching the filament as it forms aligns the molecules along its axis, and an aligned polymer is several times stronger in that direction than the same material unoriented. A nylon rope is strong because of what was done to it, not only because of what it is.

The environmental account has shifted from where it was assumed to be. Synthetic fibre sheds microplastic in the wash, which is a genuine and recent finding; cotton uses very large quantities of water and pesticide, which is an old one. Neither is the clear answer the other's critics assume.

Medium confidence Weak evidence

How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.

How this connects

Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.

uses

Polyethylene terephthalate — material · as polyester, which is the larger of its two uses by tonnage even though the bottle is the famous one
Nylon — material · the first synthetic fibre, and still the one chosen where abrasion and repeated loading matter — rope, webbing, carpet
Polypropylene — material · carpet fibre, bulk sacks and the non-woven fabric of masks and wipes
Carbon fibre — material · as the fibre in a composite rather than as fabric in its own right, though it is woven first
Cotton — material · the most used natural fibre in the world, and the one the industrial revolution's first factories were built to spin
Wool — material · clothing and carpet, where it insulates when wet and chars rather than melting — both properties synthetics need help to approach
Silk — material · the only natural fibre that arrives as a continuous filament, hundreds of metres from a single cocoon
Aramid fibre — material · as woven fabric for protective clothing, which is one of very few technical fibres used as cloth rather than as composite reinforcement
Plastic — material · as polyester, nylon and polypropylene fibre, which is most of modern clothing and is rarely counted as plastic

Sources

Material World
Our own writing

Questions this page answers

What is used for Textiles?

Where it comes from, and what it becomes

Follow Textiles back to what it starts as, and forward into what it becomes. Each step is a documented one — a real route material takes, not a chain of inference.

Upstream — what it comes from

Textiles → uses (as the fibre in a composite rather than as fabric in its own right, though it is woven first) → Carbon fibre → is composed of (carbonised from a polymer precursor until little but carbon remains) → Carbon → is produced by (as synthetic graphite, made by driving the reaction past silicon carbide until the silicon boils away and leaves the carbon behind) → Acheson process → takes as input (sand and coke, heated to 2,500 °C, which is how silicon carbide has been made since 1893) → Sand → is composed of (almost everywhere, because quartz is what is left when everything else in a rock has weathered away — though a volcanic beach is basalt grains and a tropical one is broken shell) → Quartz
Textiles → uses (as polyester, which is the larger of its two uses by tonnage even though the bottle is the famous one) → Polyethylene terephthalate → is produced by (a condensation polymerisation rather than an addition one — the units join and release water, which is why the reaction runs in reverse when the polymer is processed wet) → Polymerisation → takes as input (as vinyl chloride, which is why more than half of PVC's weight is salt rather than oil) → Chlorine → is produced by (at the anode) → Chlor-alkali electrolysis → takes as input (as brine; the salt is the feedstock for both products at once) → Halite
Textiles → uses (carpet fibre, bulk sacks and the non-woven fabric of masks and wipes) → Polypropylene → is produced by (polymerised from propylene with a Ziegler-Natta catalyst, which is what controls the arrangement of the side groups and so whether the product is a structural plastic or a gum) → Polymerisation → takes as input (as vinyl chloride, which is why more than half of PVC's weight is salt rather than oil) → Chlorine → is produced by (at the anode) → Chlor-alkali electrolysis → takes as input (as brine; the salt is the feedstock for both products at once) → Halite
Textiles → uses (the first synthetic fibre, and still the one chosen where abrasion and repeated loading matter — rope, webbing, carpet) → Nylon → is produced by (condensation polymerisation of a diamine with a diacid, which is where the two numbers in nylon 6,6 come from) → Polymerisation → takes as input (as vinyl chloride, which is why more than half of PVC's weight is salt rather than oil) → Chlorine → is produced by (at the anode) → Chlor-alkali electrolysis → takes as input (as brine; the salt is the feedstock for both products at once) → Halite
Textiles → uses (as woven fabric for protective clothing, which is one of very few technical fibres used as cloth rather than as composite reinforcement) → Aramid fibre → is produced by (condensation polymerisation into a rigid-rod polymer that is then spun from a liquid crystalline solution in sulfuric acid) → Polymerisation → takes as input (as vinyl chloride, which is why more than half of PVC's weight is salt rather than oil) → Chlorine → is produced by (at the anode) → Chlor-alkali electrolysis → takes as input (as brine; the salt is the feedstock for both products at once) → Halite
Textiles → uses (as polyester, nylon and polypropylene fibre, which is most of modern clothing and is rarely counted as plastic) → Plastic → is produced by (the reaction the whole class is defined by — long chains built from small repeating units) → Polymerisation → takes as input (as vinyl chloride, which is why more than half of PVC's weight is salt rather than oil) → Chlorine → is produced by (at the anode) → Chlor-alkali electrolysis → takes as input (as brine; the salt is the feedstock for both products at once) → Halite

These are the most distinct paths back. Textiles can be traced through others besides.