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Assessing local residence time distributions in screw extruders through a new in‐line measurement instrument
Author(s) -
Zhang XianMing,
Xu ZhongBin,
Feng LianFang,
Song XiaoBo,
Hu GuoHua
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
polymer engineering and science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.503
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1548-2634
pISSN - 0032-3888
DOI - 10.1002/pen.20495
Subject(s) - residence time distribution , plastics extrusion , materials science , mechanical engineering , residence time (fluid dynamics) , work (physics) , measure (data warehouse) , flow (mathematics) , volumetric flow rate , polystyrene , upstream (networking) , process engineering , mechanics , computer science , composite material , polymer , engineering , physics , geotechnical engineering , computer network , database
This work aimed at developing a new instrument to measure in real time the residence time distribution (RTD) in screw extruders. The instrument followed the same principle as the one reported in the literature but possessed several important advantages. For example, the detection system had two probes that allowed to simultaneously measure RTDs at any two different locations of an extruder, thus providing the possibility of calculating the local RTD between them by a deconvolution method based on a statistical theory for the RTD. Its performance was evaluated on a corotating twin‐screw extruder using anthracene as tracer and polystyrene as flowing material. The effects of various process parameters such as feed rate and screw speed on the RTDs were investigated. The emphasis was placed, however, on the effect of the staggering angle of kneading discs on local RTDs both in the kneading zone itself and its neighboring upstream and downstream screw zones. This work is in support of an ongoing project on the simulation of flow in corotating twin‐screw extruders. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 46:510–519, 2006. © 2006 Society of Plastics Engineers.