MELTBLOWING APPLICATIONS
 
The melt-blown system is unique because the process generates a fine fiber not available to the other nonwoven processes, enabling production of fine fibered fabrics, ideal for many end-use applications. Micro-denier fiber (less than 0.1 denier perfilament) is not really available as a nonwoven fibrous raw material. Hence, the melt-blown process, which can produce such a fiber, opens new vistas of products and applications. The characteristics in melt-blowing of versatility, reliability, easy of maintenance, and energy efficiency are very appealing to commercial production. At the present time, the following market segments are successfully served by melt-blown products:
 
Filtration media
This market segment continues to be the largest single application. The best known application is the surgical face mask filter media. The applications include both liquid filtration and gaseous filtration. Some of them are found in cartridge filters, cleanroom filters and others.
 
Medical fabrics
The second largest MB market is in medical/surgical applications. The major segments are disposable gown and drape market and sterilization wrap segment.
 
Sanitary products
MB products are used in three types of sanitary protection products – feminine sanitary napkin, Spunbond-MB diaper top sheet, and disposable adult incontinence absorbent products. The liners can be used on clothing as well.
 
Oil absorbents
MB materials in variety of physical forms are designed to pick up oily materials. The best known application is the use of sorbents to pick up oil from the surface of water, such as encountered in an accidental oil spill and formats in machine shops and industrial plants.
 
Apparel
The apparel applications of melt-blown products fall into three market segments: thermal insulation, disposable industrial apparel and substrate for synthetic leather. The thermal insulation applications takes advantage of micro-voids in the structure filled with quiescent air, resulting in excellent thermal insulation.
 
Hot-melt adhesives
The MB process has a special feature: it can handle almost any type of thermoplastic material. Thus, the task of formulating a hot-melt adhesive to provide specific properties can be greatly simplified by using the melt-blown system to form the final uniform adhesive web.
 
Electronic specialties
Two major applications exist in the electronics specialties market for melt blown webs. One is as the liner fabric in computer floppy disks and the other as battery separators and as insulation in capacitors.
 
Miscellaneous applications
Interesting applications in this segment are the manufacturing of tents and elastomeric nonwoven fabrics which have the same appearance as continuous filament spunbonded products.