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

为了减少社会对以石油为基础的不可再生聚合物的依赖，需要开发大规模利用天然产生的、大量可获得的聚合物，如纤维素。大规模利用生物质纤维素的主要挑战之一是纤维素的溶解和加工，以制备高性能纺织纤维等下游产品。粘胶方法是生产纤维素纤维最常见的方法；然而，这是一个复杂的多步骤过程，涉及使用非常具侵蚀性的化学品，并且需要大量的淡水。在20世纪70年代，以石油为基础的合成聚合物纤维，如聚酯和尼龙被商业化，并被证明比通过粘胶方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130万吨/年减少到2008年的40万吨/年(资料来源：国际人造丝和合成纤维委员会)。为了解决纤维素加工的这个问题，我们建议开发一种环境友好的方法，使用“绿色溶剂”制造高性能纤维素纤维。拟议的研究将有助于开发可持续和高性能的纤维素纤维，原则上可以取代重型玻璃纤维(在制造过程中需要很高的能量)，以及用于制造碳纤维的不可再生聚合物前体，碳纤维在英国和国外的航空航天、汽车、体育和风能行业的复合材料中广泛使用。

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.