quality:correction, information:filtering
Production

Polyester is typically produced through a process known as polymerization. For polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the production process involves the chemical reaction between two primary raw materials: purified terephthalic acid (PTA) or dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and monoethylene glycol (MEG).

The production process includes the following steps:

Polyethylene terephthalate, the polyester with the greatest market share, is a synthetic polymer made of purified terephthalic acid (PTA) or its dimethyl ester dimethyl terephthalate (DMT) and monoethylene glycol (MEG). With 18% market share of all plastic materials produced, it ranges third after polyethylene (33.5%) and polypropylene (19.5%) and is counted as commodity plastic.

There are several reasons for the importance of polyethylene terephthalate:

In the following table, the estimated world polyester production is shown. Main applications are textile polyester, bottle polyester resin, film polyester mainly for packaging and specialty polyesters for engineering plastics.