Manufacturing of High Performance Cellulose Fibres to Replace Glass fibres & Carbon Fibre Precursors

为了减少社会对基于石油的不可再生聚合物的依赖，需要开发天然存在的、大量可用的聚合物如纤维素的大规模利用。大规模利用来自生物质的纤维素的主要挑战之一是溶解和加工纤维素以制备下游产品，例如高性能纺织纤维。粘胶法是生产纤维素纤维最常用的方法;然而，它是一个复杂的多步骤过程，涉及使用非常侵蚀性的化学品，并需要大量的淡水。在20世纪70年代，基于石油的合成聚合物纤维如聚酯和尼龙被商业化，并且被证明比通过粘胶法生产纤维素纤维更经济。因此，纤维素纤维的产量从1973年的每年130多万吨减少到2008年的每年40万吨（资料来源：国际人造丝和合成纤维委员会）。为了克服纤维素加工的这个问题，我们提出开发一种使用"绿色溶剂"制造高性能纤维素纤维的环境友好的方法。拟议的研究将有助于开发可持续和高性能的纤维素纤维，原则上可以取代重玻璃纤维（在其制造过程中需要高能量）和用于制造碳纤维的不可再生聚合物前体，这些碳纤维广泛用于英国和国外的航空航天，汽车，体育和风能行业的复合材料。

To reduce society's dependence on petroleum based non-renewable polymers, large scale utilization of naturally occurring, abundantly available polymers such as cellulose needs to be developed. One of the major challenges in large scale utilization of cellulose from biomass is dissolution and processing of cellulose to prepare downstream products such as high performance textile fibres. The Viscose method is the most common way to manufacture cellulose fibres; however, it is a complex, multistep process which involves use of very aggressive chemicals and requires a large volume of fresh water. In the 1970s, petroleum based synthetic polymer fibres such as polyester and nylon were commercialised and were proven to be more economical than producing cellulose fibres via the Viscose method. Hence, the production of cellulose fibres was reduced from over 1.3 million tons per year in 1973 to 0.4 million tons per year by 2008 (Source: International Rayon and Synthetic Fibres Committee). To overcome this issue of processing of cellulose we are proposing to develop an environmentally benign method of manufacturing of high performance cellulose fibres using "Green Solvents". The proposed research will help develop sustainable and high performance cellulose fibres which can in-principle replace heavy glass fibres (which requires high energy during its manufacturing) and non-renewable polymer precursors used for manufacturing of carbon fibres which are widely used in composites for aerospace, auto, sports and wind energy industries in UK and abroad.