On the afternoon of February 23, good news came from Shanghai Petrochemical: The trial production of special materials for melt-blown cloth urgently developed and converted into production was successful. The average daily output reached 6 tons, which can be used to produce about 6 million ordinary disposable medical masks.
In response to the shortage of medical masks and other medical supplies during the epidemic prevention and control period, Shanghai Petrochemical temporarily changed its production schedule and started production at full capacity. A total of 6,776 tons of polypropylene medical materials have been put on the market. Polypropylene is an important raw material for mask production, and the non-woven fabrics used in masks are all from polypropylene.
But the production of protective masks also requires a core material: melt-blown cloth .
Melt-blown cloth, known as the “heart” of the mask, is the filter layer in the middle of the mask. It can filter bacteria and prevent the spread of germs. Its fiber diameter is only 30 times that of a human hair. one part. Therefore, although the raw materials are all polypropylene, there are big differences in the production process and performance between melt-blown cloth special materials and other non-woven raw materials.
“The special material for melt-blown cloth is polypropylene with a high melt index.” Lu Lu, manager of the production department of Shanghai Petrochemical Jinchang Company, said. The higher the melt index of polypropylene, the finer the melt-blown fibers, and the better the filterability of the melt-blown cloth.
After learning that meltblown cloth was still a constraint on mask production, Shanghai Petrochemical gave full play to its advantages in polypropylene production capacity, technology, team and industrial chain, and immediately organized the plastics department and holding company Subsidiary Jinchang Company launched emergency technical research and actively cooperated with local governments and qualified manufacturers to accelerate the research and development of special materials for melt-blown cloth.
In order to solve the problem of high melt index, Shanghai Petrochemical immediately mobilized resources to form a R&D team to carry out formula research, test analysis and scale-up experiments to overcome the problem. Despite various difficulties in equipment and technology, we finally succeeded in overcoming the production difficulties of high melt index polypropylene modification, and successfully launched trial production on February 23.
Shanghai Petrochemical stated that through process optimization, it is expected to increase the production of melt-blown cloth special materials by about 2 tons per day in the short term, bringing the average daily output of melt-blown cloth special materials to 8 tons. Support mask production. </p
