Research institute CSIRO and Deakin University in Australia say they have launched a wet spinning line which could dramatically increase the speed of carbon fiber production.
The wet spinning line machinery takes a mix of precursor chemicals and turns it into five hundred individual strands of fiber, which are then wound onto a spool to create a tape and taken to carbonization ovens to create the finished carbon fiber. The CSIRO/ Deakin wet spinning line was custom built by an Italian company with input from the organizations’ researchers.
‘This facility means Australia can carry out research across the whole carbon fibervalue chain: from molecules, to polymers, to fiber, to finished composite parts,’ said Dr Anita Hill, director of CSIRO Future Industries. ‘Together with Deakin, we’ve created something that could disrupt the entire carbon fiber manufacturing industry.’
This story is reprinted from material from CSIRO, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier.