Eastman Chemical Co., Kingsport, Tenn., has added a 4.5-micron-diameter polyethylene terephthalate (PET) microfiber to its Cyphrex™ microfiber product line, enabling various formulation options to fine-tune the performance of wetlaid nonwoven fabrics for applications such as filter media.
Eastman introduced Cyphrex at IDEA 2013, originally offering the microfibers in a 2.5-micron diameter. The fibers are produced using islands-in-the-sea bicomponent fiber technology (See “Quality Fabric Of The Month: A Sea Change For Microfibers,” TextileWorld.com, September/October 2013). The company reports that the 2.5- and 4.5-micron fibers may be blended to allow specific permeability and pore sizes, and that media made with the blended fibers features better sheet uniformity than media made using only 2.5-micron fibers.
“The new 4.5-micron fiber demonstrates our capability of changing size, and manufacturers can use this unique fiber to pinpoint permeability and pore size and to improve media uniformity even further,” said Fred Dulin, director, microfibers platform, Eastman. “These results demonstrate that significant value can be created in nonwoven formulations through specific design of fiber size characteristics and insights provided by industry-standard application development capabilities.”
February 11, 2014
