Although there are various
developments in electrospinning field till date from 1902 when developments in
this field started taking place and number of patents registered till date, not
much actions is seen in mass production in the field. So it may be that the need
to address technical difficulties in handling ultrafine fibres and the lack of
an obvious economic benefit when electrospun fibres are considered as simple
non-added-function replacements to readily available conventional fibres, has
slowed mainstream production take up.
As we stand at the moment,
electrospun fibres are usually presented for use on a conventional fibre
substrate, so at the moment, the application in textiles would be in the area
of added functionality rather than as direct production of entire textile
materials.
Current market and future growth:
At present some companies like
Donaldson are manufacturing their products using this technology. Donaldson use
this technology for manufacturing Filtration products mainly. Recently, Donaldson
introduced Ultra-Web nanofiber filter media for non-wovens and filtration
industries for a broad range of filtration applications. Elmarco partnered with
Liberec Technical University for NanospiderTM technology for the production of nanofibers. Elmarco has also produced pilot manufacturing line for production of nanofiber in 2004 and in 2006 offered the first models for industrial production.
Jon Stanger, Scientific Advisor to
Electrospinz Limited when questioned about future of Electrospinning technology,
said as with any high end specialty material electrospun nanofiber is unlikely
to replace traditional fiber techniques. Rather it is more likely to become a
valuable technique of producing fibers with either better performance or with functionality
normally difficult or impossible to obtain using traditional methods bringing
growth in new markets or in existing high performance materials and textile
markets.
Mr. Nick Tucker commented, there is a very large
quantity of academic research being done on the product of a wide range of
electrospun materials. As ever, the limiting factor in commercial exploitation
of this work is poor communication between the academic and commercial worlds.
I believe there are great opportunities for commercial development waiting for
exploitation. Commercial scale production plant for non wovens is already
available, so at the moment all that is limiting growth in the market is that
good ideas for novel fibres with interesting functionality are languishing on
laboratory benches.
References:
