Melt electrospinning towards industrial scale nanofiber production: an in-depth material and parameter study based on polypropylene and polylactic acid

The focus of this research is on the development of a melt-electrospinning process for the production of nanofibers referring to fibres with a diameter smaller than one micrometre based on a novel scaled-up melt-electrospinning prototype featuring 600 nozzles, bridging the gap between laboratory-scale and industrial-scale nanofiber manufacturing. Herewith tackling the industry-relevant key challenge of increasing the production of nanofibers for various applications such as filtration, energy and medicine in a sustainable and efficient way. The prototype device vastly exceeds the capabilities of any state-of-the-art technology and is successfully used to produce nanofibers with comparable quality and properties to nanofibers produced with the more conventional solution electrospinning process. Based on the polymers polypropylene and polylactic acid, the fibre diameter was tailored via process, material and device optimization.