Functional dyeable polypropylene fabric development and process parameter optimization. Part II: Development of graphene thermal insulation dyeable polypropylene fabric with process parameter optimization

Abstract

This series of studies developed a nanographene modified dyeable polypropylene yarn with far-infrared properties making it suitable for winter clothing fabrics. In this paper, part II, the dyeable polypropylene granules developed in part I are used as a base material and, with the addition of graphene nanopowder, melt-mixed and melt-spun to produce 75 d/24 f fully drawn yarn. The physical properties of the yarn, namely, yarn count, tensile strength, elongation at break, far-infrared emissivity, and far-infrared temperature rise, are investigated, and the impact of the melt-spinning process parameters, namely, graphene nanopowder content, mold temperature, melt temperature, gear pump speed, hot roller speed and take-up speed on the quality of the yarn, is determined. The Taguchi method, combined with gray relational analysis, is used to design experiments through which an optimal set of melt-spinning process parameters maximizing the multi-characteristic quality of the yarn is obtained. This optimized nanographene modified dyeable polypropylene yarn has a tensile strength of 3.5 g/d, elongation at break of 41.0%, yarn count of 75.3 d, far-infrared emissivity of 82%, far-infrared temperature rise of 21.0°C, washing fastness grade of 3–4 and surface resistance of 3 × 108 Ω.