Application of nonwoven materials in medical field - operating room supplies(B)

2) melt spinning non-woven materials

Melt spinning is the general term of melt spinning nonwoven fabrics, mainly including spunbonded, melt spraying, SS, SMS composite nonwoven materials.

(1)Spunbond is the earliest application of melt spinning non-woven materials.It is a nonwoven technology developed on the basis of chemical fiber production technology. Spunbonded nonwovens for medical and health use are made from PP slices, which are extruded, filtered, measured, spun, drawn, meshed and hot-rolled into cloth.  Fiber fineness is generally more than 1 denier, with high strength, good wear resistance and low production costs.

(2) melt spraying and spunbond process is similar, the difference is that when drafting using high pressure hot air and self-adhesive cloth, fiber fineness can be fine to 1 micron, is a kind of ultra-fine fiber spinning technology.Products with good shielding, but low strength, poor wear resistance, generally not applied alone.

(3) SMS is spunbond and melt spray composite nonwoven fabric, including SS, SMS, SMMS and other products.S refers to spun-bonded cloth layer, and M refers to melt spraying cloth layer. Multi-layer air spraying layer can be used to meet different requirements of water pressure resistance and shielding.SMS material combines the advantages of spunbond and melt spraying cloth, overcomes mutual weaknesses, has the advantages of good shielding, light weight, high strength, waterproof, oil proof, cheap price, etc., the product can be widely used in medical, health, isolation and protection fields, is one of the fastest developing non-woven technology.

At present, SMS materials for medical and protection purposes include SMS, SMMS, SMMMS three series, the seepage pressure can reach 20-30 cmH2O, 40-50 cmH2O and 90 cmH2O above, the product weight can be small to 12g/m2, to meet the needs of different application requirements.

3) non-woven materials by flash evaporation

It is a new technology of nonwoven fabric invented in the 1990s.

Flash distillation nonwoven technology is to dissolve the polymer in the appropriate solvent under high temperature and pressure conditions, the solution is ejected from the nozzle when spinning, due to the sudden reduction of pressure makes the solvent volatile, resulting in a high degree of fibrillation of the polymer into ultra-fine fiber, and then directly into the network, hot rolling adhesion and other processes to make flash nonwoven cloth.Due to its special forming method, the fiber fineness of the obtained fiber network is extremely fine, generally 0.1-0.3dtex, which is a kind of superfine fiber nonwoven fabric.

Flash steaming products with high strength, pressure resistance, wear resistance, good shielding, permeability and moisture permeability characteristics, in the medical, health, civil and industrial fields have a wide range of applications.

3.Application of nonwoven materials in medical and health textile

1) application of non-woven materials in medical products

Medical products are one of the most important application fields of nonwoven materials at present. At present, it has been widely used in gauze block, hemostatic plug, mask cloth, operating clothes, ward sheets, pillows, wound dressings, drug paste paste, band-aids, medical tape, medical bandages and medical rags and so on.

Operating room supplies

This category of products is the largest category of medical and health applications, including: surgical gown, surgical cover cloth, surgical back stand cover, surgical towel, birth pad, surgical drape and sheets, and so on.

Early in the operating room supplies mainly made of woven fabrics and knitted fabrics, then by use of wood pulp composite spunlace nonwoven technology, production is breathable, strength, evenness, composite performance all meet the requirements of the medical pulp composite spunlace nonwoven, then after finishing to alcohol resistance, resistance to blood fluoride through three resistance, the penetration performance of antimicrobial effect.As SMS material has the advantages of high water pressure resistance, good shielding, light weight, high strength, waterproof and oil-proof, low price, etc., people have been widely used in recent years, is gradually replacing the status of traditional woven fabrics.

At present, nonwoven operating room supplies have been widely used in Europe and the United States and other developed countries.

According to statistics, at present, there are more than 60,000 hospitals and 115,000 medical clinics and nearly 4.5 million beds in China. If all of them are replaced by disposable non-woven fabrics, the annual demand for medical non-woven fabrics will be considerable.

Protective equipment

Protective equipment includes N95 mask, various protective clothing, mainly anti-virus gown, and various anti-radiation gown(anti-x-ray, anti-static | anti-magnetic radiation, etc.).

Medical protective equipment has a particularly high shielding requirement for bacteria and viruses, and requires breathability, moisture permeability and portability. It is an important equipment for protecting doctors and ambulance personnel.In recent years, SARS, avian influenza and influenza a (H1N1) and other public health events have promoted the development of non-woven protective products.At present, flash steaming, melt spraying and SMS composite nonwoven fabric processing products are more commonly used.

Nonwovens in recent years, plays an extremely important role in the medical field, the rapid development of nonwoven fabric, for medical and health materials in great change and improve the product structure and performance level believes that with the innovation and development of nonwovens technology, the application of nonwovens in the medical and health supplies, will get rapid popularization and application of its technology will be further perfected and improved.