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Extraction of Contamination of Automotive Gas Tank Material by Extrusion with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide
Author(s) -
Michaeli Walter,
Rothe Bernd,
Elas Athanassios
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
macromolecular materials and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.913
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1439-2054
pISSN - 1438-7492
DOI - 10.1002/mame.200900095
Subject(s) - materials science , supercritical carbon dioxide , plastics extrusion , extraction (chemistry) , supercritical fluid , extrusion , supercritical fluid extraction , contamination , composite material , process engineering , pulp and paper industry , chromatography , chemistry , ecology , organic chemistry , biology , engineering
During their working life, plastics can be exposed to contaminating media which limit their recyclability. A continuous extraction process with supercritical CO 2 has been developed. Contaminated material is extruded through two twin‐screw extruders in a cascade. The first extruder purifies with scCO 2 and the second extruder is for degassing and hot‐cut pelletisation. Post‐consumer automotive diesel fuel tank material has been processed. A direct flow and a counter‐flow process with different screw configurations have been developed. Characterisation has been performed by headspace gas chromatography. Results show that contaminants were extracted out of the plastic for both process variants. However, direct flow yielded better extraction efficiency.