Process for manufacturing carbon fibers

A process for manufacturing carbon fibres, comprising

• a first step of spinning a fibre of a PAN precursor, and
• a second step of oxidation/carbonisation of said fibre,
• wherein:
• a. said spinning and oxidation/carbonisation step is carried out directly in line and continuously, therefore without any stocking buffer area of PAN precursor between said first and second steps;
• b. said spinning step is performed at a low speed, so that the outlet speed from the spinning step, downstream of the stretching operations, is a speed falling within a range of 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 downstream 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;
• and
• e. the fibre tows coming out of each spinning module (M) are arranged side by side with the fibre tows coming out of the preceding modules and/or the following modules (M), the fibre tows not undergoing lateral deviations with respect to the progress direction of the line, to form a single feeding belt (N) of the oxidation/carbonisation step.