New Observation Of Textile Industry: Changes Of Medical Textiles At Home And Abroad

At present, the situation at home and abroad is undergoing profound changes and international competition is becoming increasingly fierce. On the one hand, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is booming, which is changing the industrial paradigm and global industrial pattern; on the other hand, some developed countries promote the return of manufacturing industry, and the "counter globalization" undercurrent is surging. Developing countries are vigorously promoting the development of labor-intensive industries, and China's industry is facing "two-sided extrusion". Under the changing situation, there are always opportunities for change. At the new historical starting point, China's textile industry is facing new historical tasks and era topics. It needs to stand on the global level, look far ahead, and seek a new situation in the changing situation. As the mainstream media to convey the development trend of world textile technology, textile guide tries to record the development of the industry in the form of keywords, hoping that relevant practitioners can have a glimpse of the situation, think rationally, and get some inspiration. The key word of this issue is medical textiles.

Medical textiles

In 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic is spreading rapidly in the world. According to the statistics of the World Health Organization (who), as of 16:11, December 31, Central European time (Beijing time, 23:11), a total of 8.147.51 million cases of new crown cases were confirmed and 1.7981 million deaths were recorded. With the discovery of confirmed cases of new coronavirus infection in many countries, countries in the world are in a new "dangerous stage", and epidemic prevention measures are constantly strengthened.

In the whole 2020, the outbreak of the epidemic has also triggered the unprecedented global demand and attention for medical textiles. Medical textiles refer to the textiles used for medical purposes, which can be divided into four categories according to their application fields: implantable textiles, non implantable textiles, textiles for external devices, health care and protective textiles. Among them, health care and protective textiles are widely used, and most of the medical anti epidemic materials such as masks and protective clothing which play an important role in this epidemic situation belong to this category.

1. Impact of epidemic situation on meltblown nonwovens Market

The outbreak of new crown pneumonia has ignited the huge demand for medical textiles and also led to the consumption of upstream materials, such as polypropylene, meltblown nonwovens for medical masks, polyolefin and polytetrafluoroethylene for medical protective clothing. In particular, the demand for meltblown nonwovens is increasing rapidly, which has a great impact on the global market of meltblown nonwovens.

According to the data of spunbonded nonwovens branch of China Industrial Textiles Industry Association, the actual output of domestic meltblown nonwovens is about 56000 tons in 2019. Under the background of the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, in order to meet the needs of the society and the public for personal protection products, the meltblown nonwovens enterprises in the industry are actively expanding their production, adding new production lines of upstream enterprises and reforming some related enterprises In the first ten days of March, the production capacity of melt blown nonwovens was over 600 tons.

After the outbreak of the epidemic, domestic leading nonwovens enterprises rapidly expanded the production capacity of meltblown nonwovens, such as Dalian Ruiguang, Hengtian Jiahua, Xinlong holding, Dalian Hualun, etc. In addition to the above-mentioned upstream related enterprises' new production lines to expand production capacity, domestic machinery manufacturing and technology companies with good production base, such as BYD, GAC group, sangun and dady baby, are also cross-border producing medical textiles such as masks, driven by strong market demand. Many foreign nonwovens manufacturers and machinery manufacturers are also actively involved in the anti epidemic, such as DuPont company in the United States after the outbreak of the epidemic, increased the production of conventional products by three times, and launched the "Tyvek together" program to meet the global demand for personal protective equipment; international well-known nonwovens manufacturers such as reifenh? User and Oerlikon of Germany Nonwoven (Oerlikon nonwovens business unit) has solved the problem of global supply shortage by shortening the delivery time of meltblown nonwovens production line.

The epidemic situation has led to the rapid growth of meltblown nonwovens market. The market logic based on demand leads to the crazy influx of capital from all walks of life, which not only solves the market demand, but also disrupts the normal market order. It is difficult to guarantee the quality of meltblown nonwovens produced by many enterprises because of the low cost and backward production equipment. Although the market management departments have cracked down on irrational behaviors such as price hikes, there are still many nonstandard equipment and products flowing to users due to the shortage of supply caused by supply chain disruption, which has affected the healthy development of the industry.

At present, China has made gradual achievements in meltblown technology, and the complete set of conventional nonwovens production line has basically realized localization, but there are still some breakthroughs in core technology and equipment such as spinning box, spinning components, wide slit positive pressure draft device, etc., and key equipment still needs to be imported from the United States, Germany, Japan and other countries. It is also due to the great difference between the advanced level of China and foreign countries, so during the epidemic period, many enterprises still choose to introduce foreign melt blown equipment with higher price and longer supply cycle. In the post epidemic era, excess capacity will lead to more fierce competition. How to stand out in the competition requires the meltblown nonwovens industry to adapt to the new situation of normalization of epidemic prevention and control, rationally find its own development path, and improve the technology and product quality.

2. Promote the innovation and application of materials and technologies for epidemic prevention and control

At the same time, the epidemic situation also promotes the rapid development and application of new medical textile materials and technologies. Zhejiang University of science and technology and Huzhou Hehai Materials Technology Co., Ltd. and other five companies have developed high efficiency and low resistance polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) composite fiber membrane protection material. This material breaks through the limitation of high resistance of traditional PTFE microporous membrane, innovatively invents PTFE micro nano fiber membrane as barrier surface, and develops stable high-efficiency and low resistance PTFE composite fiber membrane through composite technology, which is widely used in various types The protective products won the first prize of science and technology progress award of China Textile Industry Federation in 2020. The act sputtered antibacterial protective respirator, which cultivates and promotes ten categories of textile innovative products in 2020, adopts act antibacterial technology, and uses argon ion to impact silver, copper and titanium, so that the metal material is nanocrystalline and directly sputtered on the surface of the substrate. After titanium atom is oxidized in air, it turns into titanium dioxide (TiO2). When exposed to sunlight, it will produce photocatalyst reaction, which can effectively decompose various organic compounds and some inorganic substances with unstable chemical bonds, and finally degrade them into harmless small molecular substances such as H2O and CO2, and destroy the cell membrane of bacteria and protein carrier of solidification virus. In the early stage of the epidemic, Donghua University rapidly launched a special emergency action for new coronavirus medical and health protection materials. Through cooperation with enterprises, it has developed a series of limited use medical protective clothing of rowek, which is made of protective materials with high barrier, high wear resistance and high moisture permeability prepared by instantaneous pressure relief spinning forming equipment, and some physical and chemical indexes reach DuPont's "Tewei Qiang" The product has high filtration performance, stable performance and can be reused, which provides urgent material support in the key period of resumption of work and production.

Many foreign institutions and companies have also studied the filtration performance of anti epidemic materials such as masks. Nano filter media, antibacterial filter materials, functional two-component spunbonded nonwovens that can replace melt blown nonwovens, bio based melt blown fiber filter media, and cleanable and reusable protective masks and respirators have entered the market. Zetta company of Japan developed z-mask mask during the outbreak period. The diameter of nanofiber in z-mask is 0.08-0.4 μ m, and the thickness is 1 / 10 of N95 mask fiber material. Moreover, z-mask nanofiber materials can protect the particles with particle size as small as 0.1 μ m by using the intermolecular interaction. The test results showed that z-mask could block nearly 100% of the particles about the size of the new coronavirus. Based on Synergex TM series products, Berry has developed a new material Synergex one for mask filter media in European market, which can replace conventional electret melt blown material. University of Alberta, Canada Alberta (Alberta) has developed a non cleaning, reusable mask. The principle is: researchers add sodium chloride coating on the mask surface, which is known as salt. When contacting with particles containing virus, salt can absorb water; when water evaporates, salt turns into zigzag peaks, piercing the virus membrane and killing it quickly. In addition, I3 biomedical Inc. of Canada announced that its developed triomed active mask antibacterial coating could inactivate at least 99% of the covid-19 sars-cov-2 virus in a few minutes, effectively protecting healthcare workers who are vulnerable to virus contamination.

Z-mask Nonwovens

In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, masks and other products are produced on a large scale in the amount of billions. The epidemic has triggered global plastic consumption. Abandoned masks not only cause environmental pollution, but also threaten human health with viruses and bacteria. In the new epidemic situation, how to develop degradable medical textiles has become a new topic for many researchers.

Researchers from the Institute of biology, University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada have developed a biodegradable "can mask". The framework of the mask is made of plant fiber and wood fiber, which can effectively avoid the environmental pollution caused by the mask. Jinan Shengquan Group Co., Ltd. in China uses natural cellulose composite filter paper with food grade and high air permeability to replace the inner and outer nonwovens of the mask, and uses melt blown nonwovens or nanofiber membrane as high-efficiency filtering elements to produce a disposable medical mask with high filtration and degradability. With the continuous attention of researchers on medical products such as masks, more products with high protection and environmental protection will be available in the future.

3. The epidemic situation further improved the standard system of medical textiles

The global outbreak of covid-19 in 2020 will further improve the domestic medical textile standard system. Based on the existing standards of medical textiles, such as GB 19082-2009 "technical requirements for disposable protective clothing for medical use" and "technical requirements for medical protective masks" (GB 19083-2010), the specifications are refined and supplemented.

Gb2626-2019 respiratory protection self-priming filter type anti particulate matter respirator was issued on December 31, 2019 and enforced on July 1, 2020. Compared with GB 2626-2006, it has classified and refined the respiratory resistance, and optimized the air tightness, visual field and flame retardant requirements of the breathing valve. In order to standardize the product standards of civil masks, in March 2020, China Textile Industry Federation and China Industrial Textiles Industry Association jointly issued the group standards of T / CNTAC 55-2020 and T / CNITA 09104-2020. The standard sets indicators around the mask material, wearing safety, barrier function and wearing comfort, and classifies and regulates children's masks in detail, which is applicable to the barrier masks widely used by ordinary people after returning to work. In April 2020, the first group standard of "reusable medical protective clothing" was issued in China, which defined its requirements, test methods, marks, instructions for use, packaging and storage, etc., which provided guidance for the rational use of reusable medical protective clothing and provided professional technical support for fighting against epidemic situation. In May 2020, the General Administration of market supervision (Standardization Committee) officially issued the recommended national standard GB / T 38880-2020 "technical specification for children's masks". This standard specifies the basic requirements, appearance quality and test methods of masks for children aged 6-14. In response to the lack of standard for general protective clothing, the group standard T / gdbx 026-2020 "disposable general protective clothing" drafted by Guangzhou inspection and testing Group Co., Ltd. and 30 domestic well-known enterprises and technical institutions was officially released and implemented on May 26. The standard specifies the terms and definitions, requirements, test methods, instructions for use, packaging, transportation and storage of disposable general protective clothing. It is applicable to clothing products with nonwovens as the main fabric and providing appropriate barrier and protection when contacting with others in daily environment. It provides a high-quality market supply for disposable ordinary protective clothing Technical support.

4. Thinking behind the epidemic situation

First, from the perspective of sustainable development of the industry, environmental protection of disposable medical masks and other medical products should be concerned. According to statistics, by the end of April 2020, the average daily output of disposable medical masks in China has reached 200 million, each weighing about 5g, which means that about 1000 tons of disposable medical masks will be disposed of every day. Considering the current four common recovery methods, namely high temperature incineration, landfill degradation, mechanical recovery and chemical recovery, there is no special economic and environmental protection recycling method. The main material of disposable medical mask is polypropylene (PP). The chemical stability and physical properties of the material itself become a great challenge to transform it into new products. The research shows that the fundamental way to realize the Value-added Utilization of disposable medical masks is to selectively convert the disposable disposable medical masks into related chemicals, fuels and high value-added materials with single product categories through chemical methods. When developing the reuse value of disposable medical masks, it is necessary to further study and explore the mechanism of decomposition, reconstruction and re functionalization of mask related materials, develop new selective green catalysts, degradation agents, and in-situ collaborative detection technology, design and synthesize a new generation of chemical recyclable mask materials, and formulate corresponding new mask standards.

The second is to look at the development of the whole industry beyond the basic protection function of medical textiles. At present, China's medical textile products are mainly concentrated in the fields of general medical protective textiles and health care products. In the high-end product fields, such as surgical implantable textiles and textiles for in vitro filtration, most of them need to be imported from abroad, and the localization rate is very low. Industry enterprises need to constantly improve product quality and technical content, research and develop more human friendly medical textile materials, so that the performance of medical textiles presents a diversified and high-end development trend, and transforms from low-end to high-end products with high added value.