On April 23, the American 4M Carbon Fiber Company announced that it uses the company's patented plasma oxidation technology to produce a carbon fiber with a large monofilament diameter. Its precursor is a textile-grade polyacrylonitrile (PAN) original material provided by the German Dralon company. wire.
4M and Dralon jointly developed low-cost, fabric-grade PAN-based carbon fiber strands, capable of producing 10K carbon fiber tow with a monofilament diameter of 9.6 μm (commonly used industrial-grade carbon fiber monofilament diameter is 6-7 μm). 4M Company said that preliminary research on the raw silk found that the pre-oxidation residence time in the carbon fiber manufacturing process only required 52min, which is much faster than the traditional oxidation method of commercial PAN raw silk (small diameter). The company said it will continue to conduct relevant research on fabric-grade PAN yarn to further improve material performance and optimize production processes.
4M also said that at present, there is no precedent for large-scale carbon fiber production, which is mainly caused by technical challenges in the pre-oxidation stage. If the traditional technology is used to oxidize the fibers with larger monofilament diameters, longer residence time is required and more energy is consumed, which is not economically feasible. In addition, the traditional pre-oxidation process introduces defects, which results in the performance of large-diameter carbon fibers below standard levels. For the above reasons, carbon fiber manufacturers generally do not provide large-diameter commercial carbon fiber products.
At the same time, 4M said that the advantages of large-diameter carbon fiber are low cost and good performance. Large diameter monofilament products can reduce the production cost of the entire process from raw silk production to pre-oxidation and carbonization, which is easier to achieve in large-scale production. The 4M pre-oxidation technology combined with the low-cost raw silk products provided by Dralon can significantly reduce the total cost of carbon fiber.
In addition, carbon fiber is known for its high tensile strength, but it does not perform as well as glass fiber during compression. 4M said that the compressive strength of large-diameter carbon fiber is significantly higher, and this advantage can enable carbon fiber to get more applications, such as fan blades and other existing applications.