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DIGITALISATION | PROCESS CONTROL


Industry 4.0 tools and IIoT connectivity look set to enhance control of the compounding process, allowing quality to be optimised and lifting overall efficiency. Jennifer Markarian finds out more


Digital technology set to lift compounding


Advances in information technology and improved modelling tools for simulating the compounding process are being adopted by equipment and system providers to enhance their product offer- ings. Sophisticated data management tools based on Industry 4.0 concepts are making it easier for compounders to better understand how process variables affect product quality, and ultimately to allow them to gain tighter control of their process and produce less scrap. This, along with the potential to safely use more regrind and recyclate in recipes, can save time and money while at the same time boosting sustainability. New and improved systems for process control, automated operations and remote maintenance also promise to help improve overall equipment efficiency. Adoption of model-based process control systems and the application of ‘digital twins’ (virtual representations of real processes) is making it easier to model the compounding process, according to experts from the Institute for Polymer Extrusion and Compounding (IPEC) at the Jo-


www.compoundingworld.com


hannes Kepler University (JKU) at Linz in Austria. Researchers from multiple disciplines in the


JKU’s Linz Institute of Technology (LIT) Pilot Factory and Open Innovation Center (OIC) are working together to use digitalisation to create digital twins of plastics processes. These digital twins simulate how a real-world process would be affected by changes and this understanding and insight can be used to automate process control or as an ‘assistant system’ to provide suggestions to a human operator.


Christian Marschik, Deputy Chairman of IPEC,


explained in an online seminar hosted by Leistritz earlier this year that conventional modelling approaches include analytical, numerical or data-based modelling. The LIT researchers have combined these methods in a hybrid modelling approach that takes the advantages of each to create a digital twin that can quickly make accurate predictions possible. The researchers validated their hybrid model of a twin-screw extruder for a range of screw types, materials and processing


August 2021 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 17


Main image: Enhanced connectivity and the


development of ‘digital twin’ process models is enabling further optimisation of the compound- ing process


IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK


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