Experiment And Modeling Of Multi-nozzle Electrospinning

Even though many researchers have used single-needle systems for electrospinning,the low fluid throughput in spinning has limited the industrial use of single-needlesystems. To meet high liquid throughput requirements, in the recent past multi-nozzlesystem have been tested in China. The main drawback of multi-nozzle system is thedeterioration of the local electric field at the needle tip due to the presence of otherneedles in the arrangement. The aim of the present work is to investigate the impact ofthe number of nozzles on the maximum electric field at the tip of the nozzles arrangedin line by finite element method,and to find its effects on electrospinning process,hence provide theory foundation of industrialization of electrospinning.In this paper, Polyurethane (PU) was chosen to prepare a solution that wasemployed as the working fluid. The organic solvent N,N-Dimethylacetamide (DMAc)and acetone were both of analytical grade. And study the influence of mass ratio of thetwo organic solvent on spinning performance. On the same time, we obtained theoptimal conditions of spinning parameters of the single nozzle spinning conditions(spinning voltage, spinning distance, spinning time) by studying the fiber SEM image ofdifferent spinning conditions and fiber diameter and its distribution.On the basis of the experiment, we built a simplified electric field model close tothe actual structure, and a finite element method based software package, ANSYSMultiphysics was used for electrostatic field calculations to obtain the results with bothsingle-nozzle and multi-nozzle arrangement. We got the size of the width of shielded netand collecting plate, and the relationship between the electric field and the spinningvoltage and spinning distance. It can be seen that the maximum electric field at the tipof the nozzle in the case of2-nozzle arrangement has been significantly weakenedbecause of the influence of another needle in the arrangement due to the repulsion of field lines. And the field varied very little as a function of needle spacing for the rangeused in this study (10mm to50mm, step10mm), without following any specific trend.We studied the SEM of the fiber membrane under the best spinning voltage fromtwo-nozzle system to seven-nozzle system. Experimental results showed that six-nozzlesystem was the optimal model in designing multi-nozzle system, which can meet therequirements of both higher efficiency and finer diameter of fiber.