Ge, the hottest fiber leader, announced the resear

Fiber leader GE announced the research and development process of new flame retardant materials

is one of the few special engineering plastics that have been used. 1. Preface

annmarielak, global technical manager of fiber and textile of GE Plastics, and yousseffakhreddine, global market industry manager, introduced their new ULTEM flame retardant materials on the "International fiber magazine". It is reported that the state of California in the United States has announced extremely strict mattress flame retardant regulations. This will undoubtedly promote the development of production and research of fireproof materials

ge's ULTEM resin material is very suitable for meeting the requirements of California Technical Bulletin (TB) 603 standard on flame retardant bedding

2. General condition

ultem polyether imide (PEI) resin is widely used as a material that needs flame retardation and smoke prevention, which helps cushion, Simmons and other product manufacturers to produce products that prevent open fire from accelerating combustion

ge has never used ULTEM resin to produce fiber materials in the past, but its scientific and technological personnel braved hardships and began to evaluate its potential functions for high-energy fabrics with downstream manufacturers and conduct research

California tb603 standard is about to be implemented, which sends a warning to bedding manufacturers, who often use polyurethane foam and polyester flocs to make products. California standards put forward technical requirements, including the use of high-performance raw materials and different cushion designs to solve this problem

another related problem is that halogen flame retardants release toxic smoke. The EU regulation on the restriction of dangerous goods (RoHS) strictly prohibits the use of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), which are often contained in flame retardants. It is expected that California standards will be adopted by other regions, such as the national standard recently announced by the Consumer Safety Commission (CPSC), which requires manufacturers to ensure that flame retardant materials can meet various market regulations

3. Research and development process

geultem resin is an amorphous high-performance polymer, which shows excellent high temperature resistance, good strength, large modulus, broad-spectrum chemical resistance, self combustion resistance and low smoke; The glass transition temperature is 217 ℃ and the relative thermal index (RTI) is 170 ℃. This polymer can maintain the integrity of strength at high temperature

ultem resin products, In terms of safety facilities and strict requirements "The combustion performance of the external thermal insulation materials of civil buildings should be a Level-A combustion standard spectrum analyzer. It has been used for a long time, such as firefighter helmets, aircraft and train interior decoration materials, which are the key factors for it to be used as mattress and bedding materials.

ultem resin is an amorphous structure and has high temperature resistance, so it will be difficult to extract fiber. Because it is amorphous (amorphous) Material, compared with crystal, its viscosity is large, which makes it more difficult to pass through the small hole of spinneret when drawing, and the small hole spinneret is needed for spinning finer fibers used in woven fabrics and nonwovens. Crystalline materials, such as polyester and polypropylene, not only spin smoothly through small holes, but also spin finer after extrusion and stretching. The crystalline polymer is stretched to straighten and align the molecular chain, so that the fiber strength is improved and more stable; On the contrary, the stress produced by stretching amorphous resins, such as ULTEM, will shrink when the fiber is heated, so stretching is troublesome. When ULTEM resin is extruded, the spinneret aperture must be as small as possible, but this will affect the running time of the spinneret assembly

ge ULTEM resin has a higher melting temperature of ℃, which is higher than that of conventional spinning fiber resin materials, so there are few ready-made equipment for processing this resin. There are unsafe factors in raising the temperature of conventional heating equipment, such as electric heaters and hot oil channels. Ge needs to find collaborators who have the same processing equipment and processing capacity to remove the fragments of the test piece at the same time. At the beginning of 2003, Ge cooperated with an American enterprise. This enterprise is specialized in processing thermoplastic polymers, including unusual materials such as ULTEM resin, and producing synthetic fibers through the melt spinning process

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