MATERIALS | TESTING
improve production efficiency in PET recycling by providing a more accurate and real-time process insight compared to traditional temperature and pressure measurements. While in PE and PP recycling, it provides options to control and monitor viscosity in production in real time, such as dosing of viscosity modifiers, blending of different sources, or classifying product.
Above: Testing thermal
conductivity of a carbon fibre composite using C-Therm’s Trident
equipment
types of materials, such as biodegradable and renewable plastics.
Cloud-based solutions With these demands in mind, Dynisco has extended its range of inline rheometers to make the technology more accessible for the mass market, including applications in recycling and toll compounding. It has also developed cloud-based solutions to improve visibility throughout the production chain and across remote locations, as well as making results accessible anytime and anywhere. Melt indexers and some of the inline rheometers are now based on an Industry 4.0/IoT platform to improve usability, making them more flexible for new developments in cloud-based services. These include sharing analytical results but also enabling remote servicing and learning, for example. The company highlights its melt indexer LMI5500 , which offers accuracy to standards such as ISO1133-2. It provides a reliable correlation between melt index and intrinsic viscosity of PET, which eliminates the need to work with dangerous solvents. Meanwhile, the ViscoIndicator is an inline rheometer offering easy installation and operation. It is especially useful for new users of inline viscosity measurement, allowing them to monitor quality in real-time easily and minimise off-spec production and waste. In terms of recent applications, Lorenz cites the company’s involvement in studies covering inline measurement of viscosity of starch-based polymers. “These materials are very difficult to analyse off-line because the process conditions cannot be replicated in a lab environment,” he says. “Inline viscosity measurement helped to understand the flow behaviour better, which then helps to design better machinery for these types of materials.” Inline viscosity measurement can also greatly
34 COMPOUNDING WORLD | January 2022
Thermal characterisation A new and growing area of interest in testing technology is in understanding thermal behaviour of plastics, according to C-Therm. “With the rapid growth of innovation in the electrification of transportation, battery technologies and plastic injection moulding, better understanding of a materials’ thermal conductivity, particularly those with novel composition and anisotropic thermal behaviour, has been a critical performance attribute,” says Jarett Nickerson, Vice-President, Sales & Marketing. “As polymers continue to replace traditional
materials for heat transfer, such as ceramics and metals, altering their thermal behaviour and understanding its effects has become a common issue driving the market,” he says. “In addition, compounders and masterbatchers have seen a growth in demand for properly understood thermal properties of their materials by their customers. As a supplier, it is critical that the reported and claimed characteristics of the material, particularly thermal conductivity, is accurate and representative for buyers to understand its effects on their thermal models and the end-user scenarios. A proper understanding of thermal conductivity, in all relevant axes for anisotropic materials, is of critical importance to improve thermal models and ensure thermal runaway will not occur in the end design.” Nickerson says that testing of polymers in their melt phase, or in the case of plastic injection moulding their processing phase, is a challenge due to the volatile temperatures and pressures that traditional thermal conductivity testing methods cannot replicate. C-Therm’s recent release of a high temperature/high pressure needle probe was developed to address this problem directly, allowing for accurate thermal conductivity analysis in these unique environments. Other current technical areas of interest in thermal conductivity testing of polymers include understanding anisotropy. “When materials have different properties in different axes, this cannot be overlooked,” says Nickerson. “Our Trident thermal conductivity instrument with the Modified Transient Plane Source (MTPS) and Flex Transient Plane
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IMAGE: C-THERM
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