R. Giudici et al., TRANSIENT EXPERIMENTS AND MATHEMATICAL-MODELING OF AN INDUSTRIAL TWIN-SCREW EXTRUDER REACTOR FOR NYLON-6,6 POLYMERIZATION, Industrial & engineering chemistry research, 36(9), 1997, pp. 3513-3519
This paper describes transient experiments in an industrial twin-screw
extruder reactor used for the finishing stage of nylon-6,6 polyconden
sation. Transient experiments were specially designed to obtain pertin
ent information from the industrial extruder, such as the average resi
dence time and the degree of filling. A transient model for this proce
ss was developed. The extruder is modeled as two compartments, the par
tially filled degassing zone where water is removed from the polymer a
nd the fully filled zone where the polycondensation and degradation re
actions take place. The axial dispersion model is successfully applied
to explain the results of the experiments done in the industrial plan
t.