Scientists are constantly looking for ways to develop materials that are more efficient, more environmentally friendly, or just plain better than those currently on the market. Polymer-based materials are a focus, as these materials can be used in a wide range of applications across various industries due to their versatility, durability, and unique properties. In the course of their research, scientists are always looking for ways to streamline the process during material development. Lab-scale extrusion of new polymer materials is one of those ways.
The Role of Polymers in Products
Here are just a few examples of the diverse applications of polymer-based materials:
- Packaging: Polymer materials such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are extensively used in packaging applications. They provide lightweight, flexible, and cost-effective solutions for food packaging, beverage bottles, plastic bags, and films.
- Automotive: Polymers play a crucial role in the automotive industry, where they are used for manufacturing components such as bumpers, dashboards, interior trims, tires, and seals. Polymers offer advantages like weight reduction, impact resistance, corrosion resistance, and design flexibility.
- Construction: In the construction industry, polymer materials can be found in pipes and fittings, insulation materials, roofing membranes, adhesives, sealants, and coatings. They offer properties like durability, weather resistance, thermal insulation, and chemical resistance.
- Electronics: Polymers are widely used in the electronics industry for manufacturing components such as circuit boards, connectors, insulating materials, and display screens. They offer electrical insulation, thermal stability, and lightness, which are essential for electronic devices.
- Healthcare and Medical: Polymer materials are extensively used in healthcare and medical applications: medical devices such as syringes or catheters, implants, prosthetics, pharmaceuticals and drug delivery systems all contain polymers. In this contexts, polymer-based materials can provide biocompatibility, flexibility, sterilizability, and controlled release properties that other materials cannot.
- Textiles and Apparel: Synthetic polymer fibers, such as polyester, nylon, and acrylic, are very common throughout the textile and apparel industry. These fibers offer strength, durability, wrinkle resistance, and moisture-wicking in ways that natural fibers don’t, and as such they are suitable for use in clothing, upholstery, carpets, and other textile applications.
- Aerospace and Defense: The combination of high strength-to-weight ratio, impact resistance and corrosion resistance of certain polymers offers advantages to the aerospace and defense industries. The materials are employed in applications like aircraft components, or lightweight protective gear.
- Energy: Polymer materials are used in energy-related applications, such as solar panels, wind turbine blades, fuel cells, and energy storage devices. Polymers can provide lightweight and durable solutions for renewable energy generation and storage.
As is made evident by these numerous examples, the versatility and customizable nature of polymers make them suitable for a wide range of industries and products.
How Extruders Work
Extrusion, a commonly used manufacturing process for polymers, forces a molten polymer material through a die to create a continuous profile with a specific cross-sectional shape. This well-established, highly versatile technique is a continuous and cost-effective means of production, and its precise control ensures a high and constant product quality.
The screw extruder is a device consisting of one or more Archimedes’ screws that rotate in a cylindrical barrel. Material is continuously fed into the barrel and sheared between the screw and extruder wall. The material is melted by heat input in the case of hot melt extrusion or dispersed with solvents in the case of a wet extrusion. Eventually, the fluid material is compressed and pushed through a die to form the extrudate.
Twin-screw extruders, whether they are lab-scale or pilot scale, are extruders with two intermeshing screws, with different customizable screw designs designed to serve modern material processing. The two co-rotating screws thoroughly mix product streams and their particles to ensure even distribution, thus enhancing heat and mass transfer. Twin-screw extrusion is a continuous process, which means the amount of end-product is determined by run time and does not require adaptation via different-sized production equipment as traditional batch operation does. These instruments offer flexible compounding configurations that can help develop materials on small-batch, lab-scale volumes up to pilot-scale production.
Speed the Production Process with Extrusion
The formulations of modern polymer compounds can be quite complex and include many ingredients. In some cases, additives and fillers need to be dispersed homogeneously throughout a polymer matrix, which can be quite challenging. Advanced extrusion equipment can optimize compounding, facilitating the production of these complex polymer materials.
One specific polymer-related application of extrusion, the development of new pharmaceutical compounds, provides an excellent example of how extruders accelerate research and production. The use of extruders can help overcome drug formulation challenges. For instance, poorly soluble drug molecules can be incorporated into solid dispersions using a polymer carrier via hot-melt extrusion. (Certain polymers make good carriers for sustained release forms and flavor-masked dosage forms.) Extrusion processes can also be used to produce films for oral strips or dermal patches in a solvent-free process.
When developing new drugs—or really any new polymer material product—a shorter time-to-market, reduced waste of expensive starting materials, and minimized development costs provide a distinct competitive advantage for manufacturers. Pharmaceutical extruders and related analytical instrumentation do all these things, shortening the path from feasibility studies to manufacturing.
Additional Resources
- Extrusion Technologies
- Compounding and Extrusion Online Resources
- Application note: Incorporating sensitive or low bulk density fillers in a polymer compound
- Polymer sustainability application compendium
- Application note: Why use a twin screw extruder for reactive organic reactions?
- Application note: Benefits of solvent-reduced twin-screw compounding for cost-efficient, eco-friendly, and high-performing lithium-ion batteries
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