Patent ID: 7784719

Claim:
A method of recovering components from whole carpet that includes face fibers having a density greater than 1.0 g/cm 3 , fibrous olefin fabric backing having a density less than 1.0 g/cm 3 , and binder materials, the method comprising: mechanically disintegrating and screening the whole carpet to yield fragmented carpet materials comprising face fibers, olefin backing fibers, and residual binder materials; further reducing the fragmented carpet materials to yield size-reduced face fibers and size-reduced olefin backing fibers, as well as residual binder materials; mixing the size-reduced fibers and residual binder materials in an aqueous liquid medium to form a size-reduced fiber slurry; and centrifuging the size-reduced fiber slurry in a centrifuge to separate the face fibers and residual binder materials from the olefin backing fibers.