화학공학소재연구정보센터
Polymer Engineering and Science, Vol.36, No.23, 2832-2839, 1996
Scale-Up Rules for Mixing in a Nonintermeshing Twin-Screw Extruder
Various scale-up rules and theories have been presented for extrusion, including both single- and twin-screw extruders. Until now, however, most of these theories has concerned fully-filled channels, not only for twin screw extruders of the co-rotating fully intermeshing type (COTSE) or non-intermeshing counter-rotating type (NITSE), but single screw extruders as well. As the demand for distributive mixing and devolatilization devices increases, more and more nonintermeshing twin screw extruders with regions of partially-filled channels are being used. Therefore, developing scale-up rules for such screw extruders is imperative. In this paper, scale-up rules are developed, theoretically and experimentally, by examining the relationship between distributive mixing and important flow parameters. Two partially-filled NITSE’s, with screw diameters of 0.8 and 2 inches, have been studied by using a flow visualization technique entailing a dye tracer to study the effect of distributive mixing by varying such parameters as : percentage of drag flow, screw stagger, and screw velocity. Qualitative evaluation of spread of the dye with the number of screw revolutions was obtained from videotape of the experiments. Factorial experimental design method has been applied for evaluating these results. Finally, new scale-up rules were developed and compared with rules in the literature.