Published February 1986
Sun Refining and Snia Fibre recently announced that they are designing a commercial plant to produce Fiber S, a novel polyamide blend with moisture retention and transmission properties similar to those of cotton. Fiber S is spun from a melt blend of 70%w nylon 6 with 30%w of a new polyamide, nylon 30203-6. The new nylon is made from adipic acid and a new diamine, 4,7-dioxadecamethylenediamlne. The new diamine is made from acrylonitrile and ethylene glycol.
The capacity of the new Fiber S plant has not been announced, but will probably be of rather small scale. To assess the commercial potential of Fiber S, we evaluated the production of nylon 30203-6 melt at two scales. At a plant capacity of 55 million lb/yr, typical for commercial nylon plants, nylon 30203-6 melt has a product value, which is about the same as that of nylon 66 melt and about 20% greater than that of nylon 6 melt produced on the same scale.
