MACHINERY | LAB COMPOUNDERS
Century’s CXE26 laboratory-scale extruder features larger feed and vent port openings to support feeding of lower bulk density bio-based fillers and degassing of moisture at scaled-down production rates
Research focus The TM20 Hi-Tech is the company’s primary laboratory offer and is designed specifically for research activities. Area sales manager Luciano Battistuta says the basic model concept has been offered for several years, but that the company continually makes improvements in terms of configuration and process aspects. The 20mm unit is said to facilitate upscaling from laboratory to industrial production, featuring the quality, opera- tional and performance characteristics typical of production equipment. “One of the most interesting aspects of the
unit is often requested
for laboratory work, “but as an engineering company, we are
also happy to create equipment ad hoc to meet very specific customer requirements.” At the beginning of this year, ICMA opened
what it calls an ‘innovation hub’. Located next to its main plant at San Giorgio su Legnano, not far from Milan, it allows customers to rent space for a few weeks to carry out trials, to test compounding extruders integrated with ancillaries of their own choice, and to carry out small production runs before setting up lines in their own facilities. The new resource, which is also used for ICMA’s own innovation purposes, covers an area of around 1200m2
— it is large enough to house three or four
Right: A customer compound development trial being carried out in ICMA’s new innovation hub in Italy
extruders at any one time. Colombo says it has already proved popular with clients despite the restrictions posed by the COVID -19 pandemic, which has on occasion meant customers remotely observing trials carried out by ICMA’s staff experts. Italian machinery maker Maris reports that, over
recent years, the number of trials at its technological centre, which are generally carried out in coopera- tion with the customers’ technicians and research- ers, has been growing. Acoording to the company, a fundamental requirement for obtaining good results is to analyse both the needs of the chemists who study formulation aspects (feasibility with small quantities of raw materials and easy changeover of machine configuration, for example) and those of the process technologists, who are more interested in obtaining indications of the influence of process parameters on the morphological and physical and chemical characteristics of the compounds. “In both cases, it is of utmost importance to monitor the process parameters in order to elaborate an energy balance and a first, even though approximate, estimate of the scale up,” the company says.
42 COMPOUNDING WORLD | December 2020
www.compoundingworld.com
TM20 Hi-Tech is the flexibility, which allows fast changes of configuration with respect to the raw materials introduced and the type of process,” Maris says. “This can be easily done thanks to interchangeable and modular mechanical compo- nents, which do not require the intervention of specialised technicians.” Scale-up from this type of equipment is not
immediate, Maris says, but can be calculated by considering different factors such as heat exchange (as a function of the barrel diameter) and feeding configuration for powders and/or liquids. The company can provide a calculation program to assist customers with scale-up on request. The 16mm poex T16 Scientific from Turkish
extruder maker Polimer Technics has been designed as a laboratory compounder for R&D applications and for optimising new product formulations. It is said to feature easy and highly flexibile operation due to a modular construction that allows screws and shafts to be changed very quickly.
IMAGE: CENTURY EXTRUSION GROUP
IMAGE: ICMA SAN GIORGIO
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