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POY spinning of polyester - new technologies to improve productivity

Article · January 2003

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 POY-Spinning of Polyester – Two New Technologies to Improve
Productivity
Ulrich Thiele, Consulting Polyester-Technology, Bruchkoebel/Germany
Alexander Klein, Degussa AG BU Röhm Speciality Acrylics, located at Röhm GmbH Co.
KG, Darmstadt/Germany

Partially Oriented Yarn is besides staple fiber and bottle-PET one of the three major
outlets for polyester. The World production of POY is estimated to have reached
about 8 million tons per annum in the year 2001. Today’s market for polyester POY
is a high volume commodity market with prices suffering from over-capacities that
have been built-up in the late 90th. In such a highly competitive environment the
efficiency of the production and the quality of the product is decisive for the revenues
taken from POY production. This is calling for large scale production plants, direct
spinning, fully automatic operations and lowest brake rates during spinning and
texturing as well as highest yarn uniformity.

Higher production seeds that would fully exploit the speed potential of modern take-
up hardware would be highly desirable to further improve the economics of the POY
spinning process. A lot of research has been attributed to this problem during the last
decades. However no significant break through has been achieved to increase the
wind-up speed (WUS) in POY production until the late 90th.

Picture 1 illustrates the changes in fiber properties and structure that occur when the
WUS is changed from 3200 m/min to 5000 m/min employing conventional quenching
techniques: The high level of spin line stress typically encountered at high WUS
induces higher molecular orientation, higher crystallinity and a neck like thinning of
the high speed spun PET fiber. It is well known that the properties of such high
speed spun PET fibers are unsuitable for down stream texturing operation. The
dominating contribution to the high spin line stress at high WUS is the air drag
caused by the high filament velocity relative to the low velocity of the quench air
applying conventional quenching techniques.

Figure 1: Necking and properties of polyester filaments spun at 3200 and 5000
m/min (Source: WO 99/07927)

3200 m/min 5000 m/min

Elongation: 117% Elongation: 64%

Birefringence: 0,05 Birefringence: 0,07
Crystallinity: 10% Crystallinity: 39%
BWS: 64% BWS: 6%

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Three different approaches have been explored in research to prevent this structural
changes at high WUS:

1. Chemical modification: Changing the molecular response to the increased

stress by changing the chemical nature of the PET.
2. Pneumatic quenching: Reducing the spin line stress by reducing the relative
velocity between fiber and quench air.
3. Physical modification: Blending the PET with a small amount of additive
polymer that absorbs the spin line stress and reduces the effective stress for
the PET component during formation of the composite fiber.

Chemical modification

About 10 years ago chemical modification of the POY-polymer by using different

kinds of long chain branching agents like trimellitic acid or pyromellitic acid has been
introduced on an industrial scale. Unfortunately the gain in productivity with this kind
of polymer modification is limited to about 10 - 12 % whereby the throughput
advantages are distributed to the spinning and the texturing process as well.

Aerodynamic concept to increase WUS

This approach is based on the fact that about 70 % of the spin line stress at high
speed spinning is caused by the air drag. The subsequent conversion of this
knowledge has been done by researchers of DUPONT, RIETER AUTOMATIK and
BARMAG, who invented spinning processes with an active air support in the quench
area. The idea behind this was to reduce the air friction between fiber and quench air
significantly by accelerating the quench air flow in parallel to the traveling filaments.
By means of this pneumatic quenching technique the spin line stress and thus the
orientation and the crystallinity of the fiber can be controlled to produce a POY with
120 % elongation at speeds up to about 4500 – 5000 m/min.
Compared to state of the art quenching techniques, where the quench air is gently
blown across the freshly spun filaments, the new process is using quench air which
is blown axial to the filament bundle and later on accelerated to high speed parallel
to the bundle. To perform this kind of active filament support a blowing tube is
mounted beneath each spinning die. The quench air is blown radial to the thread line
in the upper part of this pneumatic quench tube. In the lower part of the tube, at a
carefully selected distance from the spinneret, the air is accelerated parallel to the
bundle by a reduction of the tube diameter.

Knowing the sensitive impact of the quench air to spinning performance and POY-
quality one can imagine the technological challenge to develop of such a process.
Some of the key parameters are:

 Air distribution around the filament bundle

 Air velocity and velocity profile along the quench zone
 Temperature profile along the quench zone
 Geometry of the quench tube
 Distance from the spinneret to the point, where the quench air is accelerated
parallel to the draw-off direction
 Even expansion of the air flow at the exit of the pneumatic quench tube

2
Obviously this completely modified individual bundle quenching system must be
based on a carefully designed and manufactured hardware to meet state of the art
quality figures. The incorporation of this new concept into an industrial spinning
machine has been achieved in a cooperation between DUPONT POLYESTER
TECHNOLOGIES, donating the technological input of the inventor and BARMAG
AG, contributing its expertise on development and manufacturing of spinning
machines. The commercialization is being done in cooperation with an industrial
partner in UK.
The new POY-process is called EVOspeed (EVOlution in Speed) and provides the
following features for standard titer:

 POY winding speed of up to 4500 – 5000 m/min

 POY quality identically to state of the art products
 No additives or polymer modification
 No specific polymer composition
 New quench system with an individual pneumatic quench tube per bundle

Considering the complex interaction of filament titer and quenching at the one side
and the limited flexibility of a given tube design at the other side it becomes obvious
that the product flexibility of an EVOspeed spinning machine might be limited to a
certain titer range at high speeds. For lower dpf the productivity gain with
EVOspeed is limited to less than 20 % at the current stage of development.

The conversion of an existing standard spinning machine to the EVOspeed

process will be technically feasible but the potential economical benefits will depend
on the actual hardware costs, the desired product range and the accessible
production speed at that specific plant.

Figure 2 is showing a schematic sketch of the new spinning process (PCT/EP

00/08416, K.Schäfer, BARMAG AG)

3
Figure 3 is showing the schematic design of an EVOspeed machine from
BARMAG AG (Picture is published with the friendly permission of BARMAG AG)

Additive technology to increase WUS

More than 25 years ago spinning scientists of former ICI and TEIJIN discovered the
phenomena that the addition of small amounts of an immiscible second polymer to
the polyester or polyamide melt is suppressing the stress induced crystallization and
the necking during high speed spinning. At that time a variety of polymers like liquid
crystal polymers (LCP), polyamide, (co-) polymers based on acrylics for instance
have been tested to increase WUS for PET POY. The immiscible polymer which is
finely distributed in the polyester melt is forming micro fibrils during formation of the
composite fiber. These additive fibrils are absorbing the excess spin line stress at
high WUS partially while the stress within PET matrix is effectively reduced. Thus
orientation and crystallization is suppressed by the additive at high WUS.

4
The disadvantage at that time was the relatively high amount of polymer additive
required to reach a significant WUS-effect and also the high price of some of these
polymers.

During the 90th of the last century several companies restarted development to
improve the additive technology. The most important objective was to find additive
polymers of high efficiency and low price. Apparently acrylic copolymers offer the
best balance of these features.

Again the development of a high efficient, tailor made solution involved the expertise
from different fields. A collaboration between an engineering company (ZIMMER AG)
putting in the know how of spinning processes and a raw material producer
(DEGUSSA AG BU RÖHM SPECIALITY ACRYLICS) having the expertise to exploit the
versatility of the acrylic chemistry to fine tune the additive properties at a consistent
quality level, plus an industrial partner in the US has been successful to establish
and prove out this technology on an industrial scale.

The corresponding patent literature discloses that the following additive properties
are decisive to reach an optimal WUS-effect.

 Sufficient thermal stability at 290°C

 Surface tension between additive and PET > 0 (Immiscibility in PET)
 Dynamic viscosity higher than dynamic viscosity of the PET-melt
 Activation energy of polymer melt flow (Eakt) higher than Eakt of PET
 None crystalline nature
 Glass transition temperature (Tg) higher than Tg of PET

This physical characteristics allows the additive polymer to form a second phase
within the PET-matrix that can be deformed into elongated ellipsoids during extrusion
from the die and finally transformed into fibrils during draw off and solidification. High
activation energy of flow and high glass transition temperature ensures that the
additive fibrils will solidify faster than the polyester matrix during quenching. Thus
prior to the solidification of the polyester matrix the fiber is composed by a rather soft
matrix and a stiff “glass fiber like” additive component that can efficiently absorb
stress depending on its volume concentration and aspect ratio.

5
Figure 4: Composite fiber of PET + Additive spun at 5000 m/min
(Source: WO 99/07927)

5000 m/min: PET+ Additive Elongation versus modifier content at

various speeds
200

180 4350 m/min

0
160
0 5000 m/min
E 140
0
L
120
0
B [%] 6000 m/min
100
0

Elongation: 118% 080

Birefringence: 0,058 60
Crystallinity: 6% 40
BWS: 61% 0 0,4 0,8 1,2 1,6 2
Modifier
8 content %wt

Feeding, mixing and extrusion technology – an integral part of this technology - must
provide the following morphology of the polymer blend:

 Fine and homogenous dispersion of the additive polymer within the PET-matrix
 Average particle size less than 400 nm in the melt
 Narrow particle size distribution of the additive polymer
 Very constant additive content and particle size distribution within the total melt
volume and along the time scale
 Additive fibrils with large aspect ratio (l/d > 50) within the final composite fiber

By fulfilling all the above mentioned polymer and process demands the efficiency
was significantly improved. The amount of additive to produce POY at 5000 m/min
with an elongation of about 120 % was now reduced to 0,5 – 1,0 % by weight.
Obviously quality, consistency and processing of the additive are crucial at this high
level of efficiency. Today such polymer additive is commercially available at an
attractive price level.

Key process features are:

 Feasibility of POY winding speeds of up to 6000 m/min

 Effect controlled by the additive content (higher speed requires more additive)
 State of the art quality and performance figures meet at +50 % increased
productivity and less than 1 wt% additive content
 No specific composition of the polyester
 Wide titer range accessible
 No specific quenching system required

6
 To convert a standard POY-machine to additive spinning there are also several
technical prerequisites and investments necessary that must be taken into account,
for instance:

 Installation of a feeding device to dose the additive polymer to the PET chips
 Redesign of the melt mixing devices

Today companies like INVENTA-FISCHER (POY 5000 process) and ZIMMER AG

(MOD5 process) are offering 5000 m/min POY technologies based on polymer
additives like Degalan ADP 109 produced by DEGUSSA AG BU RÖHM SPECIALITY
ACRYLICS.

Both technologies to increase the POY-spinning up to 5000 m/min are clearly on the
way to the industry now. Besides the specific supplements both technologies will
relay on specific know how to operate a POY production at winding speeds of 4500 –
5000 m/min. Because of the up to 50 % higher productivity and with this the
completely changed melt distribution it is in any case recommended to fix the design
features of the spinning machine during planning and engineering. Independent
which kind of technology is chosen one has to take into account that at a wind up
speed of 5000 m/min all impacts starting from the polymer purity, and ending up with
all hardware components down to the winder will be of more impact to the final yield
compared to the state of the art 3200 m/min spinning. This will boost development of
for example new spinning components and finishes for high speed spinning.

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