PROCESSING | PURGING COMPOUNDS
purging engineering resins, such as PA6/66, PBT, PET, PMMA and PC, as well as for biopolymers with purging possible as low as 80°C. “CleanXpress products are increasingly not only used to clean extruders, but are also employed at weekends as a precautionary compound to avoid the formation of carbon deposits during machine shutdown,” says Maarten Bloem, Sales Director. “When re-starting, it is then possible to produce the right formulation immediately after purging out the compound, eliminating any black spec prob- lems. The compounds also provide protection for the screw and barrel.” CleanXpress purging compounds are also used
Above: A purging compound from Asaclean after a full machine purge showing the captured contamination
out the resin and contamination broken down by the chemical and scrubbing compounds,” he says. Asaclean favours a tailored approach to purging
Right: Polytechs claims time savings of up to 60% through the use of its CleanXpress purging
compounds
and cleaning for compounding. “As a market leader in purging we pay close attention to a diverse array of segments and resins,” says Phani Nagaraj, Vice President of the company’s US business. “Each segment, application and resin brings unique challenges, which include tempera- tures, downstream equipment, equipment size, efficiency needs and cost of the resin. We tailor product solutions to the application needs and thus have the widest product range in the industry.” Ongoing advances in compounding technology add to the processing challenges. “For example, if you are compounding super-engineering resins or resins with certain additives, you can develop serious contamination issues or layering in the screw and barrel that need special kinds of purging compounds to clean at high and low temperatures or that scrub effectively,” says Nagaraj. “We have recently introduced PF and PX2 purging com- pounds to specifically address the needs associ- ated with compounding and processing super- engineering resins.”
Potential savings France-based Polytechs has developed a com- plete range of CleanXpress purging and cleaning products for extrusion and injection moulding applications. The company says that CleanXpress purging compounds have demonstrated they can make savings of up to 60% in time and 61% in energy. The purging compounds have shown particular success in wire and cable compounding through cleaning TPU and XLDPE, as well as in in pipe and tube extrusion for purging fluoropoly- mers, PA 12 and PA 11. For films, they can success- fully purge G-PET barrier films and EVOH. CleanX- press compounds are also claimed to be ideal for
64 COMPOUNDING WORLD | September 2020
www.compoundingworld.com
as part of a preventative maintenance programme, designed for individual machines and sites. “These further improve the performance of the machines and taking precautions is always better than solving a problem after the event,” Bloem says. “Customers are using their production lines more flexibly and therefore need our support to improve productivity by reducing downtime through cleaning.” Polytechs adds that, in terms of future develop-
ments, its R&D team is focusing on recycling of purging compounds, as well as further product performance improvements in general and solving specific customer problems.
Options for PVC UK-based PVC specialist Dugdale was acquired by Benvic in September 2019 and business growth for Benvic-Dugdale is now focused on meeting demand for enhanced and effective cleaning systems for end-to-end production processes, primarily companies utilising extrusion and injection moulding equipment. These purging and
IMAGE: ASACLEAN
IMAGE: POLYTECHS
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