Optimisation of polymer foam bubble expansion in extruder by resident time distribution approach

M. Larochette , Didier Graebling (1) , Frédéric Léonardi (1)

1 IPREM - Institut des sciences analytiques et de physico-chimie pour l'environnement et les materiaux

In this work, we used the Residence Time Distribution (RTD) to study the polystyrene foaming during an extrusion process. The extruder associated with a gear pump is simply and quantitatively described by three continuoustly stirred tank reactors with recycling loops and one plug-flow reactor. The blowing agent used is CO2 and its obtained by thermal decomposition of a chemical blowing agent (CBA). This approach allows to optimize the density of the foam in accordance with the CBA kinetic of decomposition. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.

Domains: Polymers

M. Larochette, Didier Graebling, Frédéric Léonardi. Optimisation of polymer foam bubble expansion in extruder by resident time distribution approach. AIP Conference Proceedings, 2007, Zaragoza, Unknown Region. pp.890-895. ⟨hal-01615981⟩