(Knoxville, TN, US) and the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL, Oak Ridge, TN) have signed an exclusive licensing agreement for a new technology that is designed to dramatically reduce the time and energy needed in the production of carbon fiber.
The ORNL/RMX plasma processing technology is a new approach to the oxidation stage of carbon fiber production in which polymer materials are oxidized (or stabilized) before carbonization. During oxidation, the thermoplastic precursor is converted to a thermoset material that can no longer be melted. Oxidation is the most time-consuming phase of the multistep carbon fiber conversion process.
“In conventional systems, it generally takes between 80 and 120 minutes for oxidation,” says Felix Paulauskas, co-inventor of RMX Technologies' plasma technology. “We found a way to cut the time by a factor of two-and-a-half to three times, so we can process fiber in 25 to 35 minutes.”
Compared to conventional oxidation techniques, the team’s plasma oxidation technology reduces unit energy consumption by 75% and reduced production costs by 20%, while maintaining or improving the resulting carbon fiber quality. Plasma oxidation can be used to produce all grades of carbon fiber from low-end industrial to high-end aerospace grades.
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