Production of recycled EPS fibers by centrifugal spinning

Abstract

Centrifugal spinning is a new technique for producing of nano and microfibers that has a great differential: a higher production rate than those presented by traditional methods. Due to a great interest in using nano and microfibers in technological applications along with the environmental interest in polymer recycling, this research had the purpose of production fibers by centrifugal spinning from the expanded poly-styrene recycling and the evaluation of the influence of operational parameters such as the concentration of polymer solution and the speed of rotation in the average diameter and in the distribution of the diameters of fibers formed. The fibers obtained were characterized using the Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM) and they had their diameters measured using ImageJ software. The fibers obtained in this research were entangled, woven, fused, with a rough and porous surface, with bead formation and without directional ordering. The results obtained show that the polymer solution concentration was the most influential parameter in the fibers analyzed characteristics and, in general, its increase generates an increase in the average diameter. With the increase in rotation speed, there has been often a reduction in the presence of beads and microparticles due to the better stretching of the fibers. In less concentrated solutions, continuous fibers with more regular surfaces were obtained, however, promoting the higher production of beads. In the most concentrated solutions, we noticed the formation of porous fibers and very rough surfaces, as well as fused and woven fibers. Through the measurement of its diameters, it was possible to observe the obtaining of fibers with average diameters of 407,02 nm to 38113,20 nm, and the smallest value was obtained with the parameters of 5% w/w of polymer concentration and rotation speed of 15000 rpm and the highest value had 15% w/w concentration polymer and 10000 rpm.

Keywords: centrifugal spinning, nanofibers, microfibers, recycled expanded polystyrene.