A review of polyethylene‐based carbon fiber manufacturing

Abstract

Carbon fibers and their composites have attracted much attention in recent years and are being used in an increasing number of industries. However, due to the high production costs of carbon fibers and the complex manufacturing process of composites, their use in large series applications is still limited. The main cost driver in carbon fiber manufacturing is the production of the precursor fiber, with polyacrylonitrile (PAN) being the prevailing feedstock today. Approximately 50% of the production cost of carbon fibers is related to the precursor fiber. For this reason, the use of a new precursor material offers enormous cost-saving potential.Polyethylene (PE) is a promising alternative to PAN due to its high carbon content, low cost, high availability, and melt processability. This study reviews the research and development activities on PE-based carbon fibers. The manufacturing of the precursor fiber and its conversion process into a carbon fiber are discussed. The review also provides an overview of published information on concepts for commercial production of PE-based carbon fibers and various cost models.

Additive Manufacturing of Carbon Using Commodity Polypropylene

“…[17][18][19] A common example in this area is carbon fiber manufacturing, which uses polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as a carbon precursor and involves multiple processing steps, including fiber spinning, drawing, thermal stabilization/crosslinking and carbonization. [20] Alternatively, many other carbon precursors have been reported, including pitch-based chemicals, [21] lignin, [22,23] cellulose, [24,25] polyethylene (PE), [26][27][28] polypropylene (PP) [29,30] and polybenzoxazines. [31,32] While these chemical can be effectively converted to carbons, the scope of most work in the area of structured carbon production is associated with fibril materials; [33] the ability of manufacturing carbon with complex architectures at macroscopic scale is largely underexplored.In recent years, additive manufacturing (AM) has attracted significant attention in both academic research labs and largescale manufacturing facilities, leading to wide recognition as a key future manufacturing technology.…”

A versatile modification strategy to enhance polyethylene properties through solution-state peroxide modifications

“…In the near absence of olefinic end groups (as demonstrated for IMPE), peroxide-triggered modification reactions can be reasonably expected to form H-type branches via the reaction of two macroradicals. Identification of H-type branching is particularly challenging and, to the best of our knowledge, unequivocal 13 C NMR observation of such CH-CH linking moieties has only been reported for the gamma irradiation of short n-alkanes or low molecular weight PE. [61][62][63] Having established the concept of solution-state peroxide modification of PE, the impact of the solvent was subsequently investigated (Fig.…”

“…Modification reactions were performed on a commercially available injection-moulding grade HDPE (IMPE). This polymer was extensively characterised using 1 H and 13 C NMR spectroscopy prior to the modification reactions to fully understand the composition and microstructure (Fig. S1-4 †).…”

A review of high-performance carbon nanotube-based carbon fibers

“…In the early 2010s, Dow Global Technologies (today known as Dow Chemicals Company) demonstrated, in collaboration with [89] that polyolefin-based CF was more cost-effective than PAN-based CF. In 2017, the NEWSPEC project carried out cross-linking and carbonization of modified PE using an electron beam; this study is still continuing [93,94].…”