An optimized melt spinning process to increase the productivity of nanofiber materials

Abstract

The main disadvantage of the current electrospinning and related processes for producing nanofibers is low throughput rate, which is a challenge for quite some time. Traditional approach of studying the influence of one factor at time on nanofiber diameter does not give a complete picture of the process, where many interacting process parameters are being neglected. This paper reports a melt spinning process to increase the production rate of nanofiber materials. An additional attachment was fixed below the filament extruder of a melt spinning line. This attachment with controlled heated airflow arrangement stretches the filament coming out of the extruder by the process of sequential drawing which result in the formation of nanofiber materials. A die with segmented cross-section was used during melt extrusion process. A Box and Behnken factorial design of experiment was conducted to study the influence of multiple parameters on fiber/filament diameters. These parameters were distance of the first drawing zone from the die, airflow, and air temperature. The selected parameters were varied at three levels, À1, 0, and þ1, respectively. The current setup produces fibers with diameter ranging from 820 to 1145 nm, smallest diameter was 820 nm. Among the selected parameters, the interaction effect of the air temperature and distance of the first drawing zone from the die was a dominant factor on the extrusion of nanofibers. These results show that in a multivariable process, interaction effect of the parameters played a major role in determining fiber diameter and it cannot be neglected.

Nanofiber applications in microbial fuel cells for enhanced energy generation: a mini review

“…In addition to the potential improvement of MFC performance, nanofiber technology can also contribute to the sustainability of MFCs by utilizing renewable feedstocks in nanofiber production. Nanofibers can be fabricated from various materials, such as carbon, metal, polymer, and ceramic, using different fabrication techniques, including electrospinning, 38,39 melt spinning, 40 force spinning, 41 chemical vapour deposition, 42 and template synthesis. 43 The most common nanofiber production process is electrospinning due to several benefits compared to conventional techniques for producing nanofibers, including flexibility in choosing materials, ability in controlling fiber size and structure, and capacity for large-scale production.…”

Advances in Integrating Carbon Dots With Membranes and Their Applications

“…Howbeit, centrifugal spinning can only obtain a maximum fiber length of 300 mm, which cannot be spun continuously and therefore cannot form a dense membrane well. Melt spinning is a method of spinning a polymer melt in a melt spinning machine [23] . However, melt spinning is not widely used by researchers due to its demanding spinning conditions, which require higher temperatures and higher voltages.…”

Biomimicry in Bio-Manufacturing: Developments in Melt Electrospinning Writing Technology Towards Hybrid Biomanufacturing

“…The scaffold's architecture directly controls its mechanical and biological properties [53,[73][74][75]. Therefore, a significant amount of research in the literature has been focused on adjusting, understanding, and predicting the influence of process parameters on fiber diameter, experimentally, and numerically [42,53,62,73,[76][77][78][79].…”