Easily splittable hollow segmented-pie microfiber nonwoven material with excellent filtration and thermal-wet comfort for energy savings

Abstract

The segmented-pie composite fibers can be separated by high-pressure hydroentanglement to form a high-strength, lightweight microfiber nonwovens. Nowadays, it is an urgent problem to develop easily split composite fibers and reduce the energy consumption of hydroentangled in bicomponent spunbond hydroentangled technology. Herein, molecular dynamics simulations were first performed for polyester and polyamide 6. The results reveal that the surface adsorption energy between polymers decreases with the decrease of the polymer molecular chain regularity, and the cohesion energy density and solubility parameters reduce with the reduction of the polymer crystallinity. Then polyamide 6 compound spinning with polyesters of different crystallinity, and the segmented pie microfiber nonwoven was prepared through different hydroentangled pressures. The results show that the splitting rate of low crystallinity polyester/polyamide 6 fibers is much higher than that of polyester/polyamide 6 fibers, with a maximum increase of 94.80% at the same hydroentanglement pressure, and the hydroentangled energy consumption can be reduced up to 77.12% for a certain splitting rate. This strategy promotes the complete splitting of composite fibers at a low hydroentanglement pressure, which saves energy and effectively improves the filtration and thermal-wet comfort of nonwovens, providing a viable method for achieving energy savings in bicomponent spunbond hydroentangled technology.