Patent ID: 7635745

Claim:
A process for recovering a water-dispersible sulfopolyester comprising the steps of: (a) providing an aqueous dispersion comprising said water-dispersible sulfopolyester, wherein said water-dispersible sulfopolyester comprises: (i) residues of one or more dicarboxylic acids, (ii) about 2 to about 20 mole %, based on the total moles of diacid or diol residues, of residues of at least one sulfomonomer having 2 functional groups and one or more sulfonate groups attached to an aromatic or cycloaliphatic ring, wherein said functional groups are hydroxyl, carboxyl, or a combination thereof, (iii) one or more diol residues, wherein at least 25 mole %, based on the total diol residues, is a poly(ethylene glycol) having a structure H—(OCH 2 —CH 2 ) n —OH wherein n is an integer in the range of 2 to about 500, and (iv) 0 to about 25 mole %, based on the total repeating units, of residues of a branching monomer having 3 or more functional groups, wherein said functional groups are hydroxyl, carboxyl, or a combination thereof; (b) removing water from said aqueous dispersion thereby forming a sulfopolyester concentrate having a sulfopolyester concentration at least twice that of said aqueous dispersion, wherein said aqueous dispersion comprises less than about 10 weight % of said water-dispersible sulfopolyester, wherein said sulfopolyester concentrate has a sulfopolyester concentration of greater than about 20 weight percent; and (c) recovering at least a portion of said sulfopolyester from said sulfopolyester concentrate to produce a recovered sulfopolyester. wherein said recovered sulfopolyester exhibits an average molecular weight of at least about 50% of the molecular weight of said sulfopolyester present in said aqueous dispersion.