ABSTRACT

Meltblowing is a most versatile and cost effective process commercially available world-wide to produce microfiber non-wovens in one step from thermoplastic resins. In recent few years there has been a growing interest in development of bi-component (bico) meltblown nonwovens. Various bicomponent pairs of meltblown fiber webs were successfully produced on Reicofil® bicomponent (bico) meltblown line at TANDEC since its installation in March 1999.

The bicomponent structure of microfine side-by-side meltblown fibers provided new possibility to make the finer fibers by potential fiber splitting. Two approaches of post-treatment were applied towards this investigation - mechanical and chemical methods. The mechanical method is intended to split each component apart in a side-by-side bico fiber, normally using hydro-entanglement, which utilized a pressurized stream of water to split the multi-component conjugate fibers. In this paper, hydroen-tanglement was applied to eight bico webs including PP/Nylon 6, PET/Nylon 6, PP/PE, PET/PP, PE/Nylon-6. The web structure was extensively examined by optical microscope, and SEM. The web properties before and after the treatments were also evaluated, including basis weight, fiber diameter, bulk density, air permeability, tensile properties, and flexural rigidity.