Textination Newsline

Reset
3 results
TiHive Wins RISE® Innovation Award for their SAPMonit Technology Photo INDA
03.10.2023

TiHive Wins RISE® Innovation Award for their SAPMonit Technology

Business leaders, product developers, and technology scouts convened at the RISE® (Research, Innovation & Science for Engineered Fabrics) Conference, Sept. 26-27, Raleigh, NC for two days of valuable insights in material science, process and sustainability innovations. RISE is co-organized by INDA and The Nonwovens Institute, North Carolina State University.

Industry, academic, and government experts shared their expertise in these key areas:

Business leaders, product developers, and technology scouts convened at the RISE® (Research, Innovation & Science for Engineered Fabrics) Conference, Sept. 26-27, Raleigh, NC for two days of valuable insights in material science, process and sustainability innovations. RISE is co-organized by INDA and The Nonwovens Institute, North Carolina State University.

Industry, academic, and government experts shared their expertise in these key areas:

  • The future of nonwoven manufacturing
  • Real-world applications and advances in filter media
  • rPolymers and sustainability
  • Innovative strategies and circular solutions
  • Advancements in sustainable nonwoven applications
  • Market statistics and data trends

A highlight of RISE was a poster presentation of fundamental nonwovens research by The Nonwovens Institute’s graduate students. As an added value, The Nonwovens Institute offered RISE participants a tour of its world-class facilities located on the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University, featuring the most extensive set of lab- and pilot-scale equipment found anywhere including all the nonwovens platform and testing technologies.

RISE® Innovation Award Winner
TiHive won the 2023 RISE Innovation Award for their SAPMonit technology. TiHive’s innovation, SAPMonit – a technology breakthrough, inspects millions of diapers weekly. SAPMonit delivers lightning-speed inline inspection of superabsorbents’ weight and distribution, optimizes resources, detects flaws, and accelerates R&D. SAPMonit utilizes advanced see-through cameras, high-speed vision algorithms, and secure cloud integration, revolutionizing industry norms. SAPMonit has great potential for sustainability, cost reduction, and enhanced customer satisfaction as it avoids hundreds of tons of plastic waste per year per machine.

The RISE Innovation Award finalists included Curt. G. Joa, Inc. for their ESC-8 – The JOA® Electronic Size Change, Fiberpartner Aps for their BicoBio Fiber, and Reifenhäuser REICOFIL GmbH & Co. KG for their Reifenhäuser Reicofil RF5 XHL.  Together, these finalists’ innovations have the potential to reduce plastic waste by millions of kgs.

DiaperRecycle won the 2022 RISE® Innovation Award for its innovative technology to recycle used diapers into absorbent and flushable cat litter. By diverting used diapers from households and institutions, and separating the plastic and fiber, DiaperRecycle strives to decrease the climate-changing emissions of diapers from landfills.

2023 INDA Lifetime Technical Achievement Award
Ed Thomas, President, Nonwoven Technology Associates, LLC, received the 2023 INDA Lifetime Technical Achievement Award for his decades of nonwoven contributions to the growth and success of the nonwoven industry.

RISE 2024 will be held October 1-2, 2024 at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.

More information:
INDA RISE® nonwovens
Source:

INDA

Photo: pixabay
21.09.2021

Virtual Quality Inspection Optimizes Production of Filter Nonwovens

Nonwoven production received more attention than ever before from the general public in Corona times, because the technical textile is crucial for infection protection. The ultra-fine nonwoven products are manufactured in so-called meltblown processes. A cross-departmental team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern is optimizing the entire production chain in the »ProQuIV« project. Simulations help to guarantee the product quality of the filter material despite fluctuations in production.

Nonwoven production received more attention than ever before from the general public in Corona times, because the technical textile is crucial for infection protection. The ultra-fine nonwoven products are manufactured in so-called meltblown processes. A cross-departmental team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM in Kaiserslautern is optimizing the entire production chain in the »ProQuIV« project. Simulations help to guarantee the product quality of the filter material despite fluctuations in production.

The abbreviation »ProQuIV« stands for »Production and Quality Optimization of Nonwoven Infection Protection Clothing«. This is because bottlenecks in the production of these materials were particularly evident at the beginning of the Covid 19 crisis. For the meltblown nonwovens, this optimization of the product quality is also particularly difficult because the textiles react very sensitively to fluctuations in the manufacturing processes and material impurities.

Digital Twin Keeps an Eye on the Big Picture
»Meltblown« is the name of the industrial manufacturing process whose ultra-fine fiber nonwovens are responsible for providing the crucial filtering function in face masks. In this process, the molten polymer is forced through nozzles into a forward-flowing, high-speed stream. It is stretched and cooled in a highly turbulent air flow.

»The overall process of filter media production – from the polymer melt to the filter medium – presents a major challenge in simulation,« explains Dr. Konrad Steiner, head of the »Flow and Materials Simulation« department. »In the project, we kept the big picture in mind and developed a completely integrated evaluation chain as a digital twin. In doing so, we take several key components into account at once: We simulate the typical production processes of nonwovens, the formation of the fiber structures and then the material properties – here, in particular, the filter efficiency. This allows us to quantitatively evaluate the influences of the manufacturing process on the product properties.« In each of these individual areas, Fraunhofer ITWM and its experts are among the leading research groups internationally.

Homogeneity of the Material – Fewer Clouds in the Simulation Sky
In the meltblown process, a key factor is the behavior of the filaments in the turbulent, hot and fast air flow. The properties of the filaments are strongly influenced by this air flow. The quality of the filaments – and thus the quality of the nonwovens – is influenced by many factors. Dr. Dietmar Hietel, head of the »Transport Processes« department, knows what this means more precisely in practice. His team has been working at Fraunhofer ITWM for years on the simulation of various processes involving filaments, threads, and fibers. »The focus of the project is the so-called cloudiness, i.e. the non-uniformity of the fiber distributions in the nonwoven,« explains Hietel. »We are investigating the question: How homogeneous is the fabric? Because the quality of the products can be greatly improved if we increase the uniformity. Our simulations help figure out how to do that.«

Objective Evaluation of the Homogeneity of Nonwovens
The researchers also use appropriate image analysis techniques to quantify this cloudiness. The power spectrum plays a special role here. »The cloudiness index (CLI) describes homogeneity complementary to local basis weight and its variance,« describes Dr. Katja Schladitz. She brings her expertise in image processing to the project. »Our CLI ensures a robust assessment of the homogeneity and can thus be used for different material classes and imaging techniques to be used as an objective measure.« The frequencies that go into the CLI calculation can be chosen so that the CLI is meaningful for the particular application area.

Filtration: How Efficient Are the Filters?
For the upscaling to industrial processes such as mask production, the ITWM expertise in filters is also included in the project. The »Filtration and Separation« team led by Dr. Ralf Kirsch has been working for years on the mathematical modeling and simulation of various separation processes.

»What's special about this project is that we calculated the efficiency of the filters for fluctuations of varying degrees in the fiber volume fraction,« emphasizes Kirsch. »This allows us to specify up to what level of cloudiness the required filter efficiency can be achieved at all.« As a current example of this, the figure depicts in the graphic the efficiency of a filter material for N95 masks as a function of the inhomogeneity of the nonwoven.

ITMW Methods Support Across the Entire Process Chain
In »ProQuIV«, digital twins and calculations from Fraunhofer ITWM support a holistic view and better understanding of the processes. The production of technical textiles thus not only becomes more efficient, but the nonwovens can be developed virtually without having to realize this in advance in a test facility. In this way, production capacities can be increased while maintaining or even increase the quality. Together with long-term partners from industry, the research can be put into practice quickly and efficiently.

Simulations save textile companies experiments, allow new insights, enable systematic parameter variations and solve upscaling problems that can otherwise lead to bad investments during the transition from laboratory plant to industrial plant. However, virtual implementation of nonwoven production also opens up new opportunities for optimization at other levels. For example, acoustic insulating nonwovens or even hygiene nonwovens can also be optimized in terms of their product quality precisely with regard to the material properties to be achieved – while taking into account the process fluctuations that occur.

The project is part of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft's »Fraunhofer versus Corona« program and was completed in April 2021. The results will flow into several follow-up projects with the nonwovens industry.

Photo: pixabay
24.08.2021

Air, Water, Oil: What PLA bioplastic can filter well - and what not

Air filters have been discussed so often in recent days in the fight against the pandemic. With filter material made of nonwoven fabric, they block the way back into rooms for aerosols containing viruses. But how can these devices not only protect health, but also be operated with filter material that is as environmentally friendly as possible?

Air filters have been discussed so often in recent days in the fight against the pandemic. With filter material made of nonwoven fabric, they block the way back into rooms for aerosols containing viruses. But how can these devices not only protect health, but also be operated with filter material that is as environmentally friendly as possible?

Under clearly defined conditions, the bioplastic polylactide (PLA), also known as polylactic acid, is suited for this purpose. This can be deduced from results obtained by researchers from the Zuse community in the recently completed "BioFilter" research project. The key question for this and other potential applications of biofilters is: How do the special properties of PLA affect the filter performance and durability? After all, PLA can have practical disadvantages compared to its fossil-based competitors. Its material tends to be brittle and it doesn't particularly like high temperatures beyond 60 degrees Celsius. As a biogenic material, polylactic acid is also potentially more susceptible to abrasion and organic degradation processes. This can play an even greater role in the use of filters, e.g. in sewage treatment facilities, than in air filters. Industrial customers, however, naturally want a durable, reliable product.

From monofilament to nonwoven
Against this background, the researchers studied the PLA properties in order to test nonwovens for biofilters on this basis. The German Textile Research Center North-West (German Textile Research Center North-West - DTNW) and the Saxon Textile Research Institute (STFI), where the nonwovens were produced, were involved. Granules from various commercially available manufacturers were used. However, the research did not start with nonwovens, in which the fibers are deposited close together in different layers, but with so-called monofilaments, i.e. fibers made of PLA that are comparable to threads. DTNW and STFI initially carried out tests on these monofilaments, e.g. in a climate chamber for aging and durability.

As can be seen in the picture, the monofilaments became brittle after only two weeks at higher temperatures from 70 degrees Celsius, as the DTNW authors recently reported in the Journal Applied Polymer Materials. Under normalized conditions, however, the monofilaments showed no measurable reduction in stability even after almost three years, and the PLA nonwovens were in no way inferior to their fossil-based counterparts in terms of filter performance. "In my opinion, the focus for the use of PLA as a filter material will be on applications where relatively low temperatures are present, with which PLA copes very well," says DTNW scientist Christina Schippers.

Besides temperature and humidity consider other factors
For the researchers, however, the project, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, was not just about the suitability of polylactide for air filters, but also for other applications, such as filtering water. In addition, the research revealed that when evaluating filter media made from bio-based and biodegradable nonwovens, it is important to consider other influencing factors, such as mechanical loads caused by air currents, in addition to temperature and humidity. "The innovative core of the project was to evaluate the possibilities and application limits of PLA nonwovens as filter media with sufficient mechanical properties and long-term stability," says project leader Dr. Larisa Tsarkova. Like her colleagues at STFI, DTNW is involved in the Zuse Community's Bioeconomy Cluster, in which researchers from nonprofit institutes cooperate under the guiding principle of "Researching with Nature." "For us, the bioeconomy is a top cross-industry topic that connects numerous institutes of the Zuse Community and is lived through collaborations such as with the 'Bio-Filter'," explains the future STFI managing director Dr. Heike Illing-Günther.

Cooperation in the Bioeconomy Cluster
With the results obtained from the "Bio-Filter" project, DTNW and STFI now want to continue working in order to be able to make derivations for clearly described areas of application for PLA nonwoven filters in the future. These possible fields of application extend far beyond room air filters and thus beyond the pandemic. For example, the water-repellent property of PLA is potentially interesting for filters in large-scale kitchens for water-oil filtration or also in the industry for engine oils.

The research is also so important, because PLA is already quite well established in individual consumer-related segments - keyword: carrier bags. Traditionally, lactic acid was used to preserve food, for example in sauerkraut. Today, PLA is obtained via a multi-stage synthesis from sugar, which ferments to lactic acid and polymerizes this to PLA, as Kunststoffe.de explains. PLA is one of the best-known bioplastics, but has not always been readily available due to strong demand in recent years. The Netherlands-based company Total Corbion has announced plans to start up a PLA plant with an annual capacity of 100,000 tons in Grandpuits, France, by 2024. It would be the largest plant of its kind in Europe, with Asia leading the way so far.

Source:

Deutsche Industrieforschungsgemeinschaft Konrad Zuse e.V.