PLANNING EXPERIMENTS | LAB COMPOUNDERS
Jennifer Markarian speaks to CPM Extrusion’s Adam
Dreiblatt and Polymer Technology Center’s Thomas McHouell to find out how to run an effective lab compounding trial
Getting the most from your laboratory trials
Laboratory-sized twin-screw extruders are essen- tial for running experiments before moving to larger-sized compounding lines. Compounders have a number of options available to them: buying their own laboratory- sized equipment to run in-house trials; outsource the task to a lab operated by the extruder manu- facturer they plan to buy production-scale equipment from; or use an independent academic or commercial lab. To learn more about the process of planning and running a lab trial, Compounding World spoke to Adam Dreiblatt, Director of Process Technology for extruder manufacturer CPM Century Extrusion, and Thomas McHouell, President of the Polymers Technology Center, which is a non-profit compounding lab in Charlotte, NC, US.
CW: What are some of the types of experiments to be run in a compounding trial?
www.compoundingworld.com
Dreiblatt: Laboratory compounding trials could be thought of in three categories. In formulation develop- ment experiments, a wide range of formulations are produced—typically holding the compounding condi- tions constant but varying the
formulation so that properties can be compared by further testing. Other experiments prepare a particular compound formulation for scale-up to a commercial machine. And some tests look to see if a brand-new material can be compounded at all.
McHouell: Customers may be looking for solutions to materials questions or trying new materials. We’ve seen a lot of experiments looking at compostable com- pounds and using all types of biobased fillers.
Main image: CPM’s Extrusion Process Technical Centre at Lauffer in Germany is equipped with four extruders plus essential auxiliary
equipment for trials
� December 2022 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 47
IMAGE: CPM EXTRUSION GROUP
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