#8 Fiber Basics

Fiber Basics

Gina Christopher

Nylon Production:

Nylon is a thermoplastic. Nylon is one of the most important synthetic polymers. About 4 million tons a year are produced worldwide. Most nylon is made into fibers for ropes, clothing, and for reinforcing tyres. Nylon is made from 2 monomers. Adipic acid or hexanedioic acid has a chain of six carbon atoms. Hexamethylene diamine, or diaminohexane, also has a chain of six carbon atoms. When the two monomers react together, a molecule of water is produced as each link is formed. These two monomers continue to link together to form long chains called nylon. The raw materials used to make the two monomers are cyclohexane and adiponitrile. These are both derived from crude oil. Cyclohexane is oxidized, first by air and then by nitric acid, to give adipic acid. Adiponitrile is hydrogenated to give hexamethylenediamine. The two monomers first react to form salt. Heating the salt to drive out water produces nylon. When the white nylon is produced, it's molten and is forced through holes to form laces of nylon. The laces are cooled in water and chopped into short lengths about 3 to 4mm long, called granules. The granules, which are thermoplastic, will be remelted and molded, or forced through fine holes to make nylon fibers.

 

Recycling Plastic Bottles into Polyester Yarn:

Polyester is made from oil, so recycling means we get more mileage from our precious source than converting plastic bottles into chips of hot air, tossing the chips around, giving them hard shells, and then going through a dryer to remove moisture that weakens the final product. A warm screw moves the chips through heated pipes, melting them into a thick liquid. This is molten recycled polyester, and it is then ready to be turned into yarn. It will be pressed through a dye plate that resembles a shower head, which is part of a device called the spin pack. The spin pack utilizes a mesh filter, a metal distribution plate, and fragments of shattered metal for enhanced filtration. They preheat the pack, so the polyester won't harden as it flows through it, and then they transfer it to one of the openings from which the liquid probably assets flow through tiny holes in each disk shape. The recycled polyester is turned into filaments, and they cool and harden. As they exit, each one is five times finer than a single human hair. The yarn travels around rollers into a compartment where air buffets the yarn, entangling the filaments that hold them together. A spool then racks up the yarn at a rate of over 200 kilometers an hour. The yarn is stiff like dental floss, but that changes when the machinery pulls the polyester yarn over heated rubber rollers. This process stretches it and realigns the molecules. Then more equipment twists it, and it's taken up by automated spools. After this, the polyester yarn resembles wool. The transformation from plastic bottles to polyester yarn takes about a couple of weeks.

 

One Step Further (Jacquard Loom & Influence on Computers ):

In the early 1800s, an inventor named Joseph Marie Jacquard created the jacquard loom. He lived in France and loved making beautiful fabrics with intricate designs, but weaving these patterns by hand was very difficult. So, he invented a special room that used punch cards. By changing the punch cards on the loom, we have different patterns automatically. In some ways, these punch cards were like the first computer programs. The punch cards gave the lumen instructions just like how we give computers instructions. This idea eventually inspired other inventors, such as Charles Babage, who notice the punch card method and thought the idea could be used to create a machine that could do calculations. So he designed a machine called the analytical engine, which uses punch cards to perform different tasks. This was one of the earliest concepts of a computer computing a punch card system.  It is very interesting to see how the programming that went into the Jacquard loom helped create computer software programs.

 

 

References:

Nylon production

Recycling Plastic Bottles into Polyester Yarn on "How It's Made"

From Weaving to Computing | The Magic of the Jacquard Loom