Clarifying the truth about new fibers—Lyocell fiber_Outdoor Sports garment Manufacturer

Introduction:At present, the names of some fibers cannot fully reflect or even completely misunderstand the essence of fiber, which has brought many adverse effects on the healthy development of the chemical fiber product market. This is not It is excluded that some manufacturers conduct false publicity and concept hype in order to open up the market. The standardization and sustainable development of the industry should start with the standardized naming and classification of products. This magazine launches the column “Clarifying the Truth about New Fibers” in order to clarify the truth about new fibers, make more people in the industry familiar with the origin of these fibers, and at the same time, regulate the market. play a certain promoting role.

Tencel^®Production Process

In daily production and trade, “Tencel” and “Tencel” are two commonly used words. Some industry insiders or media, and even authoritative experts often use “Tencel^{®” and “Lyocell” are regarded as two types of fibers. For example, you often see expressions like this: “The proportion of new regenerated fibers such as Tencel, Lyocell, bamboo pulp fiber, and milk protein fiber has been greatly increased.” Obviously the above phenomena are all common sense fallacies.}

1 The origin of Lyocell fiber

Lyocell is the name of a major category of fiber, just like Polyester (polyester) fiber and Polyamide (polyamide) fiber. It is a category that distinguishes one type of fiber from another type of fiber. Some people think that Lyocell is Tencel^®, and Tencel^® is Lyocell. Drawing an equal sign between them is obviously a very low-level mistake, because in a large company like Lyocell Among fiber-like products, in addition to Tencel^®, there are other brands. This is also where there are many misunderstandings or misunderstandings about Lyocell fiber in the industry. Tencel^® and Tencel^® are just the brand names of Lyocell fiber produced by a certain company. They represent the trademark of a fiber product rather than the classification of fiber ingredients. Since it is a trademark name, it is necessary to add the registered trademark symbol. Therefore, “Tencel” and “Tencel” are wrong expressions. It should be “Tencel?”, “Tencel^®” .

In principle, Lyocell fiber is a regenerated cellulose fiber made by dissolving cellulose in an aqueous solution of N-Methyl Morpholine Oxide (NMMO) and spinning it. The name of the fiber was named by BISFA (International Bureau of Standards for Man-made and Synthetic Fibers). The U.S. Federal Trade Commission also confirmed that the name of the regenerated cellulose fiber produced through the above process is Lyocell, and stipulated that the product name cannot be used in place of “Lyocell” on the ingredient label of clothing. “Annotation. “Lyo” comes from the Greek “Lyein”, which means dissolution, and “cell” is taken from cellulose “Cellulose”. The two together are “Lyocell”. The original European Community Directive (1997/37) designated Lyocell as “CLY”.

Lyocell fiber has excellent physical and mechanical properties, especially wet strength and wet modulus, which are close to synthetic fibers. Lyocell fiber has the comfort of cotton fiber, the drape and bright color of viscose fiber, and the soft feel and elegant luster of silk. It can be spun purely, or blended, interwoven or mixed with other natural fibers, synthetic fibers or regenerated fibers. Composite, it can also be made into non-woven fabrics, paper and filter materials.

Ordinary Lyocell fibers include filaments and short fibers. Lyocell filament is mainly represented by Akzo Nobel’s Newcell^®, and Lyocell staple fiber mainly includes Tencel^®, Alceru^®, and Cocel^®, Acell^®, etc. These varieties use wood pulp as raw material, and the recovery rate of the solvent NMMO during the spinning process can reach more than 99%.

2 Development history and current situation of Lyocell fiber

2.1 Dutch Akzo Company

After 1976, Akzo, a company headquartered in the Netherlands, organized Enka Company and its research institute to begin research on regenerated cellulose fibers using NMMO as a solvent, first producing Lyocell fiber. In 1980, Akzo Company first applied for a technology and product patent for Lyocell fiber. In 1989, BISFA officially named the fiber produced by this method as “Lyocell”. In 1994, Akzo merged with Nobel to form Akzo Nobel.

2.2 British Courtaulds Company

Courtaulds is one of the earliest manufacturers to develop Lyocell fiber. In 1984, the company built a pilot plant in Grimsby. In 1987, it purchased the patent license for Lyocell fiber production from Akzo Company and built a 2000t/a semi-industrial plant in 1988. . In December 1992, Courtaulds built the first 18,000 t/a production plant in Mobile, Alabama, with an investment of US$90 million. It was officially put into production in 1994. In February 1996, an additional US$140 million was invested to build another 2.5 The second production line of 10,000 tons/a has a trade name of “Tencel^®“, which is translated as “Tencel^®” in my country. Since both are trade names, so A trademark number must be added when used as a product. In 1998, Courtaulds invested another 120 million pounds to build a 42,000 t/a Lyocell short fiber (Tencel^®) factory in Grimsby, England. At that time, it also planned to establish branch factories in countries such as South Korea and Singapore.

In July 1998, Akzo Nobel acquired 65% of Courtaulds’ shares and established Acordis (headquartered in the Netherlands). It had a long and short fiber production system and became the world’s largest regenerated cellulose fiber manufacturer at that time. In 1999, Akzo Nobel sold its fiber business (Acordis) to the CVC Capital Partners group. The Dutch company Corsadi BV (located in the UK), a subsidiary of the group, was responsible for operating all of Acordis’s Lyocell fiber production and sales businesses. These businesses later developed into The Tencel Group of Companies includes two factories in the United States and the United Kingdom.

2.3 Austrian Lenzing Company

Lenzing Company is one of the major manufacturers of viscose fiber in the world. In order to overcome the environmental pollution caused by viscose production, it began to search for new solvents in the early 1980s. In 1984, it developed three solvents and acquired them from Akzo Company in 1986. We purchased 5 basic NMMO patents and built the Lenzing pilot plant in August 1990. On July 2, 1997, the 12,000 t/a Lyocell short fiber production line built in Heiligenkreuz was put into production, with the trade name “Lenzing Lyocell^®”.

In 1999, Lenzing Company formed a joint venture with Akzo Nobel Company to establish a Lyocell filament factory with a capacity of 5,000t/a in Obernburg, Germany. The production process used is similar to that of Acordis Company, and the trade name is “Newcell^®” . From January to August 2000, the production capacity of Lenzing’s first production line in Heiligenkreuz was expanded to 20,000 t/a. In February 2004, the second Lyocell production line with an investment of 36 million euros was officially put into operation, with a production capacity of 20,000 t/a. Since then, Lenzing has been operating at the Lyocell production site in Heiligenkreuz.��reaches 40,000 t/a.

On May 4, 2004, Lenzing acquired Tencel Group Company, a subsidiary of Corsadi BV. Corsadi BV is the owner of four business units within Acordis, namely Tencel, Acetate Chemicals, Cordenka and Polyamide High Performance GmbH. Since then, Lenzing has unified the world of Lyocell fiber production, with a production capacity of 120,000 t/a. From March 2005, Lenzing decided to use the trade name “Tencel^®” for all Lyocell fibers under the group. In early 2008, Lenzing’s second production line at the Heiligenkreuz production plant in Austria was put into operation (with a total investment of 25 million euros). The plant’s Lyocell fiber production capacity reached 50,000 t/a, and Lenzing’s total global Lyocell fiber production capacity reached 130,000 t. /a, as shown in Table 1. Currently, the company has launched a number of new Lyocell fiber products, leading the development of cellulose fiber technology in the world.

2.4 China

my country’s research on Lyocell fiber spinning technology started relatively late. In the early 1990s, it began to explore and test Lyocell spinning technology. At the forefront was Chengdu University of Science and Technology, which jointly tackled key problems with Yibin Chemical Fiber Factory to explore process conditions. And achieved phased results; Sichuan University conducted systematic research on the synthesis and recycling of NMMO, and established a small-scale production device of 50t/a NMMO in 1999; Donghua University conducted research on Lyocell fiber in 1994, and built a 100t/a domestically produced Equipment pilot production line; my country’s Taiwan Province Julong Fiber Co., Ltd. built a 30t/a Lyocell fiber test line in Changhua at the end of 1998; since the late 1990s, Donghua University, Shanghai Textile Holding Group and other units have conducted long-term research, We also conducted joint research with a German research institute and achieved success. At the end of 2006, the 1,000t/a production line of Shanghai Leo Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd. was officially put into operation, breaking the original monopoly pattern of foreign companies.

The China Academy of Textile Sciences began research and development of Lyocell fiber localization engineering technology in 2005. In 2006, it completed the research and development of the 5L intermittent dissolution spinning process, which solved the problem of spinning stability; in 2007, it completed the 100L intermittent dissolution spinning process. In the research and development of spinning technology, the design and manufacturing of continuous impregnation, mixing and dissolving equipment were completed in the same year; in 2008, they were successful in the design and manufacturing of thin film evaporators, and qualified spinning liquid was prepared, and in June 2008 New solvent-processed cellulose fibers that meet quality performance indicators were obtained. At present, an engineering small-scale trial demonstration line of key equipment for new solvent-based cellulose fiber with an annual output of 10 tons has been completed and has achieved continuous and stable operation. The “1000t annual new solvent method cellulose fiber localization production line project” jointly developed by China Textile Science Research Institute and Xinxiang Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd. has been fully completed and put into operation; in November 2008, it was jointly developed by Fujian Hongyuan Group and the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences The 300t/a pilot project of “Research and Development of New Solvent Method Regenerated Bamboo Fiber Textile Materials” completed by other units passed the acceptance inspection.

At present, in China, in addition to Shanghai Leo Chemical Fiber Co., Ltd., Hengtian Swan and Shandong Yingli have also invested in actively researching and developing Lyocell fiber, which is still in the debugging stage.

2.5 Other countries and regions

Germany’s TITK also researches and manufactures Lyocell fiber. It was put into production in 1998, mainly short fiber, with the trade name “Alceru^®“; the Lyocell fiber developed by South Korea’s Hanil Synthetic Fiber Company is called “Acell^®“; the Lyocell fiber made in Russia is sold under the trade name “Orcel^®“; Japan also has small batch production.

3 Conclusion

The vigorous development of new fibers has also brought about the problem of irregular naming and classification. The profit-seeking of businessmen and the lack of understanding from experts have further aggravated the confusion about the names of new fibers. We hope that more knowledgeable people will understand the origins of these new fibers and use correct methods to guide production and regulate the consumer market. (Text/Dong Kuiyong and Zhao Yongxia)