FROM TESTING LABS TO STORE SHELVES: The Nonwovens Institute at N.C. State supports many popular consumer products.

• Author: Barkin, Dan

In May, there was a textiles conference at N.C. States McKimmon Center that included a tour of N.C. State University's textile education complex at Centennial Campus nearby. We went through the Wilson College of Textiles and The Nonwovens Institute next door.

As we were taken through the Institute, we saw a lot of testing labs and machinery. All manner of polymers were being melted and spun into fibers and turned into engineered fabrics. Needle-punching machines and water jets were entangling them into webs.

The U.S. nonwovens industry has been growing; North Carolina has the largest concentration of nonwovens companies in the country, according to the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina. A big factor in the industry's success has been The Nonwovens Institute, its research, development and testing hub and training partner. You will hear talk about the need for academia and industry to work together to drive economic growth. The Nonwovens Institute is the model for that.

Executive Director Behnam Pourdeyhimi, its leader for more than two decades, is a major reason.

WHAT ARE NONWOVENS?

You may not know the term, but you know nonwovens. Baby wipes, face masks, hygiene products, diapers, Swiffers, Tyvek and more. Mark Snider, who works for INDA, the industry's trade association in Cary, recalls being at a conference that sent out a team on a break to buy products at local groceries made with nonwovens.

"And when they came back--and they had one 6-foot table set up in the front of the room during the conference--they ended up having to get two more tables, because there were over 300 products. And that was 20 years ago," says Snider. "It was shocking."

Another industry conference will be coming to N.C. State at the end of September, co-hosted by INDA and the Institute, bringing in 250 industry representatives and academic researchers.

When you look at who comes to this conference--Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark, Dow, Cummins, ExxonMobil, names that show up on the list of Nonwoven Institute members--you get some idea of what this is about.

This would have seemed improbable 30 years ago, when Pourdeyhimi and some academic colleagues were trying to get a little research center off the ground.

POURDEYHIMI'S STORY

Pourdeyhimi became interested in nonwovens as an undergraduate in England. After finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Leeds, he came to N.C. State as a research associate in textiles, then went to Cornell University...