Process for manufacturing carbon fibres and plant for the actuation of such process

Process for manufacturing carbon fibres, of the type comprising a first spinning step of a fibre of a PAN precursor and a second oxidation/carbonisation step of said fibre, characterised in that:

• a. said spinning and oxidation/carbonisation steps are carried out directly in line and continuously, therefore without any stocking buffer area of PAN precursor between the two steps;
• b. said spinning step is performed at low speed, so that the outlet speed from the spinning step, downstream of the stretching operations, is a speed falling within the range of the suitable processing speeds in the subsequent oxidation/carbonisation step;
• c. said spinning step is performed in a modular way on a plurality of spinning modules (M. aligned in one or more rows (A, B), each spinning module (M. having a productivity not above 10% of the overall productivity of the spinning step;
• d. in each individual spinning module (M), the fibres down-stream of the spinning area follow zig-zag, rectilinear paths through deflection and driving rollers (3-5), both in a horizontal direction and in a vertical direction, along which paths the various spinning treatments are carried out;
• e. the fibre tows coming out of each spinning module (M) are arranged to the side of the tows coming out of the preceding and/or the following modules (M), without undergoing transversal deviations with respect to the progress direction thereof, to form a single feeding belt (N. of the oxidation/carbonisation step.