Birth of new technology: 1 ton dry kelp weaves 2,000 square meters of "cloth"

Such as silk, bright silk, soft as cotton, in the near future, when you walk along the beach wearing a flowing dress, the skirt's ingredient label is likely to be written on a new word - "seaweed fiber." On the 103rd Engineering and Technology Forum of the Chinese Academy of Engineering held yesterday, Professor Xia Yan of Qingdao University showed the participants a piece of newly-developed “seaweed cloth”. The yarn raw material used in weaving is the gelatin extracted from kelp.

Spinning - weaving - clothing, bright beautiful clothes intertwined with a wide variety of fiber materials. For thousands of years, people are accustomed to extracting natural fibers from cotton, hemp, wool, and silk, or synthesizing fibers using petrochemical methods. But why are scientists now adopting the idea of ​​seaweed?

“Cultivating cotton, hemp and grain to compete for land, producing petroleum and coal resources of chemical fiber, and coal resources are limited. To mankind's tomorrow, we must open up a third source of fiber.” Based on this idea, Xia Yanzhi led the R&D team to start searching and experimenting, keeping a close eye on the line of sight. The ocean. He found that seaweed is renewable, biodegradable, and has mature artificial breeding techniques. China has an annual output of 500,000 tons of kelp, which accounts for 56% of global production and is worth a try.

Thinking about things, it's a lot of work at hand. After four years of repeated experiments, Xia Yanzhi finally spins the kelp into threads and woven into cloth. The seaweed was washed, dried and chopped first, then beaten and separated to remove iodine and mannitol from the kelp, and the main polymer gelatin, alginate, was extracted and used as a raw material, followed by dissolution and modification. Sex treatment, spinning, and several post-processing steps, the algae fiber was born.

In addition to raw materials that are natural, renewable, and non-polluting in the production process, seaweed fiber also brings many unexpected benefits to researchers. First of all, it does not point, flame retardant performance exceeds international standards by 10%, will not play an open flame in the air; Second, it radiation protection, fiber contains a large number of metal ions, can effectively shield electromagnetic waves; Moreover, it antibacterial hemostasis, biological Good compatibility is an ideal medical material; in the end, it is good to “eat” heavy metal ions and is expected to act as a filter valve in sewage purification.

Following kelp, the R&D team has tried to extract fibers from a variety of algae, including brown algae, agynococcus algae, carrageenan algae, and even more than a few species that have been flooded in the coastal waters of the Yellow Bohai Sea.

Xia Yan revealed that at present, preparation of seaweed fiber has been completed in small and medium-scale trials and a production line with a capacity of 10,000 tons is being planned. It is estimated that according to the existing production techniques, 200 tons to 250 kg of alginate can be extracted from 1 ton of light dried kelp, and approximately 200 kg of fiber can be produced, and 1 m2 of cloth can be knitted per 100 g of seaweed fiber. In other words, 1 ton of dry kelp = 2000 square meters of "seaweed cloth." Based on this calculation, the cost of seaweed fiber is approximately 50,000 to 70,000 yuan per ton, which is 2 to 3 times that of cotton yarn. If the seaweed fiber is blended with the cotton yarn, more cloth can be woven and the cost is lower.