Continuous, Pilot-Scale Production of Carbon Fiber from a Textile Grade PAN Polymer

Abstract

Presented here is an investigation into the successful wet spinning and carbonization of a low-cost textile grade (TG) polyacrylonitrile (PAN) polymer blended with a more traditional carbon fiber (CF) grade PAN precursor. Both wet spinning and carbonization were performed using continuous pilot scale facilities directly analogous to larger scale industrial processes which provide validation for further scale-up. The blended PAN precursor fibers (TG-CF) showed consistently uniform cross-sections with the benchmark CF grade PAN precursor exhibiting mechanical properties similar to a commercially available precursor fiber. Despite a TG-PAN only precursor failing to adequately stabilize, the benchmark CF-PAN and the blended (TG-CF) precursor fibers and carbon fibers produced are high quality and exhibit uniform properties. The TG-CF carbon fiber containing 70wt% of TG-PAN has a tensile strength of 2.2 GPa, a tensile modulus of 210 GPa and a 1% elongation to failure. Although less than the CF-PAN carbon fiber, the nonetheless very good mechanical properties of TG-CF affirm that this approach has the potential to develop scalable low-cost carbon fiber suitable for a wide range of important applications.