The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymers recently announced that it will be exhibiting the latest ComCarbon technology at the ILA Berlin air show on April 25-29, 2018. This technology significantly reduces the production costs of mass-produced carbon fiber.
It is known that in the conventional process, half of the production cost of the PAN-based carbon fiber is consumed in the production of the raw silk. Since the raw fiber cannot be melted, it must be produced by an expensive solution spinning process (solution spinning).
'To this end, we have developed a new process for the production of PAN-based yarns that can reduce the production cost of raw silk by 60%. This is an economically viable melt spinning process, using a specially developed meltable PAN-based copolymers. Dr. Johannes Ganster, Minister of Biopolymers, Fraunhofer IAP Institute explained.
In the production process of carbon fiber, the raw yarn must undergo a process of stabilization and carbonization. In the new process, the raw silk produced by the melt spinning is reconverted into a 'non-melting' state. This is done beforehand. After the "Pre-Stabilization" step, it is sent to a conventional oven and carbonized at 1600 degrees Celsius.
This melt spinning process is more economical and environmentally friendly than traditional spinning processes because: First, the new process no longer uses any solvents that are harmful to the environment, and it does not cost money to recycle these solvents. Second, the absence of solvent means that the material in the molten state can be spun at 100%, thus greatly increasing the spinning speed.