Synthetic fibres melt spinning

For synthetic and regenerated fibres, the fibre production (primary spinning) is mainly made by melt spinning (polyester, nylon etc.), dry spinning (elastane etc.) or wet spinning (viscose, lyocell etc.). Lenzing AG has produced carbon footprints of viscose and lyocell fibres and compared these with other fibres (Shen and Patel, 2008 Shen et al., 2010 Terinte et al., 2014 Van der Velden et al., 2014). The production of natural fibres via agriculture or forestry has been studied elsewhere (e.g. Sandin et al., 2013). 

Artificial fibre products are made from two types of materials, organic and inorganic. Synthetic fibres can be produced using true synthetic polymers, regenerated materials and modified natural ones. Dry spinning, wet spinning and melt spinning... 

The diameter of natural and synthetic fibres usually ranges from 7 to 20 xm. Microfibres and bicomponent split fibres allow a range of 3-7 pm and finer. Tightly woven textiles made of fine microfibres are watertight, but are permeable to water vapour. Melt-blow and flash spinning fibres have a 1 pm diameter. With electro-spinning, a diameter of 100 nanometres or lower can be produced. These fine fibres are very suitable for the filtering of small particles. 

Spun bonded media production processes exploit the thermosetting properties of polymers, to form fibres that can be bonded by combinations of heat, pressure and chemical activation. Melt spinning, using conventional synthetic fibre technology, was the earliest method used for producing spun bonded filter media and continues to be of major importance, but finer fibres are produced by melt blowing and flash spinning processes. 

Spruiell, J.E. Structure and property development during the melt-spinning of synthetic fibres. In Structure Development During Polymer Processing, Cunha, A.M.,... 

PP/silver nanocomposite fibres were prepared with the aim of achieving permanent antibacterial activity in a common synthetic textile. The fibres were melt-spun by coextmsion of PP and PP/silver masteibatches using general conjugate spinning. Masteibatches were made up of a mixture of PP chips and nano-sized silver powder. The antibacterial efficacy of spun fibres was high when the masteibatch was used as the sheath rather than the core. The antibacterial activity of nano-silver in fibres was evaluated after a certain contact time and calculated by percent reduction of two types of bacteria. Staphylococcus aureus and Klebsiela pneumoniae. DSC and wide-angle X-ray diffraction were used for analysis of stractuie, thermal properties and crystallisation behaviour of the spun fibres. SEM was carried out in order to observe particle distribution on the nanocomposite fibres. 17 refs. (2nd International Conference on Polymer Fibres, Manchester, UK, July 2002)... 

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