Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773

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Test Equipment

A miniature extrusion line for small scale processing studies

J.A. Covas
, P. Costa
Department of Polymer Engineering, Institute for Polymer Composites, University of Minho, 4800-058 Guimaraes, Portugal
Received 8 March 2004; accepted 12 April 2004

Abstract

A miniature extrusion line using a micro-extruder was developed and used to produce extrudates with a simple
cross-section from a few grams of raw polymer material. Given the difficulty in applying standard design scale-up
rules, the definition of the geometry of the screws was based on the predictions provided by plasticating extrusion
software developed previously by the authors. The aim was to induce thermo-mechanical environments comparable
to those found in bigger machines. Several materials were processed with the device, model predictions were assessed
experimentally and the quality of the dispersive mixing achieved was estimated for two more complex polymer sys-
tems.
# 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Extrusion; Micro extrusion; Compunding; Mixing; Scale-up

1. Introduction of the most popular solutions uses a small conical, par-

The scientific and technical advances in reactive
compounding and in the manufacture of a new gener-
ation of materials (e.g., nanoclays, carbon nonotubes)
provided the framework for the production of innova-
tive polymer systems with improved performance, such
as (immiscible) polymer blends, modified polymers,
thermovulcanizates and nanocomposites, [1–5]. Very
often, during the development stage of some of these or
other new materials, one has to manipulate minute
quantities, either as a result of the synthesis method, or
due to the high cost of some of the ingredients. One
may wish to mix thoroughly a few grams of compo-
nents in order to produce a new compound, to process
a few grams of material and thus obtain samples with
the required geometry for further characterization, or
to estimate the new material’s processability (e.g., ther-
mal stability, viscosity level, elasticity, melt resistance).
Several devices aiming predominantly at mixing
small amount of material (1–10 g) have been developed,
some of them being available commercially [6–9]. One


Corresponding author. Tel.: +351-253-510-320; fax: +351-
253-510-339.
E-mail address: jcovas@dep.uminho.pt (J.A. Covas).
tially intermeshing, twin screw extruder fitted with a
bypass system that allows for melt recirculation via a
backflow channel. The same recirculation principle was
used by Gough et al. [10] to manufacture the ‘‘Bradford
Mini-Recirculation Flow Cell’’, where flow birefrin-
gence and particle velocity measurements can be carried
out through two opposite glass windows, working as
lateral walls of the rectangular recirculation channel.
Internal mixers, or torque rheometers (such as the
Rheomix or the Brabender Plasticorder), are also used
frequently for mixing relatively small amounts of
material. In these cases, the manufacture of useful sam-
ples implies the subsequent use of techniques such as
compression moulding or film casting using solvents.
The above mentioned devices operate mainly in
batch mode, i.e., at prescribed time intervals they yield
samples without a specific regular shape capable of
being directly used for, e.g., mechanical characteriza-
tion. Also, the recirculation flow through a channel of
uniform cross-section may allow for filler/fiber re-
agglomeration or coalescence of the dispersed phase in
the case of composites and polymer blends, respectively
[9]. In fact, most of the existing mixers were designed
with the objective of providing successive melt reorien-
tation (i.e., distributive mixing), but do not induce

0142-9418/$ - see front matter # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.polymertesting.2004.04.005
764 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773
significant extensional flow, which is known to be more
efficient for dispersive mixing purposes [11,12]. A num-
ber of laboratory extrusion lines are also available and
capable of manufacturing some of the most important
types of extrudate, such as tubing, blown and cast film,
monofilament and electrical wire. However, they
require the availability of several hundred grams to a
few kilograms of raw material.
This paper presents a miniature extrusion line
developed with three main purposes, namely: (i) possi-
bility of mixing/processing a few grams of material; (ii)
capability of producing continuously an extrudate,
such as a rod or a strip (useful, for example, for mech-
anical characterization purposes), (iii) creation of a
thermo-mechanical environment inside the extruder
which is as similar as possible to that developed in
practical extruders. The layout of the device is pre-
sented and the underlying design method is discussed.
The functional response and the mixing capabilities of
the miniature extruder were studied for a number of
materials.
2. Development of the device
2.1. General layout
The miniature extrusion line presented in Figs. 1
and 2 has the main principles and functionalities of
equivalent industrial lines, although at a much smaller
scale, i.e., the line is capable of producing continuously
a constant cross-section (typically a rod or a strip)
through the usual stages of plastication in the extruder,
pressure melt flow in the die and post-extrusion cool-
ing/drawing. Due to the small dimensions of the equip-
ment steady state is reached rapidly, hence it becomes
possible to produce samples with a few (less than 10)
grams of material. The line comprises a vertical single
screw extruder (with an external diameter of 6 mm and
a length to diameter ratio, L/D of 11.5), a die, a cool-
ing bath and a winding system, all fixed to a common
Fig. 1. Layout of the micro-extrusion layout.
v
platform. The extruder can operate up to 300 C and
the screw speed can be varied continuously in the range
0–100 rpm. A few flights of the screw’s feed zone pro-
trude from the barrel and are directly exposed to the
material deposited in the hopper, thus facilitating
material drag downstream (a similar configuration has
been adopted by an extruder manufacturer [13]). The
melt is extruded horizontally through a die that is
screwed to the barrel. The angular speed of the winding
spool can be varied, in order to adjust to the linear
speed of the extrudate, set its cross-section, or induce a
certain degree of axial molecular orientation. This ver-
tical set-up is convenient for attachment purposes. For
example, the device could be coupled to a rotational
rheometer.
Due to the small dimensions of the apparatus, the
raw materials should be in powder (or liquid/melt)
form. In order to ensure trouble-free gravity solids flow
and smooth drag during the initial screw truns, not
only the hopper can be directly cooled by a circulating
fluid, but also the top portion of the barrel can be inde-
pendently cooled/heated. This is important, as local
temperatures influence differently the polymer’s friction
coefficient [14,15]. The geometry of the screw, to be dis-
cussed in greater detail in the next section, comprises
the usual feed, compression, metering (with the event-
ual presence of mixing devices) stages, plus discharge
and sealing sections.
Both the die and the screw can be easily replaced, in
order to change the cross-section of the extrudate, or to
fine-tune the extruder to the processing characteristics
of the material being processed, respectively. For visua-
lization/monitorization purposes (e.g., collecting sam-
ples along the extruder axis, identifying the location
where the material becomes fully molten, detecting
eventual processing difficulties such as material block-
age in the screw channel), the screw can be quickly
ejected from the barrel (and while the screw is rotating)
by pressing a lever. Thus, unlike most extruders (where
screw extraction requires interrupting its operation,
 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773
Fig. 2. The micro-extruder.
removing the die and using some kind of contraption
to slide the screw or the barrel) one avoids the rela-
tively long dwell times at high temperatures, when
changes in the location of the screw where the material
appears to melt and/or alterations in the material’s
characteristics (e.g., filler or fibre re-agglomeration
when producing composites, or coalescence of the dis-
perse phase in the case of polymer blends) are possible.
2.2. Screw Design
Scale-up rules of single screw extruders have been
established with a view to extrapolate from laboratory
to industrial production size machines and vice versa.
Overviews of the development of scale-up rules and
respective strategies are available [16–18]. Usually, they
are set up after imposing constant global conditions
(e.g., shear rate), or analysing separately each main
process parameter (e.g., solids conveying rate, melting
rate, pumping rate, residence time, total shear strain,
power consumption and ratio of barrel surface area to
throughput). Each of these methods has drawbacks
and may result in poor performance with respect to the
remaining variables not considered in the analysis
765
[16,17]. Probably, the most widely used in industry
scale-up method [16,19] was developed by Maddock
[20], which stipulates that constant shear rate is main-
tained by increasing the channel depth by the square
root of the diameter ratio, decreasing the screw speed
by the square root of the diameter ratio and increasing
the channel depth by the square root of the diameter
ratio:
Q2 ¼ ðD2 =D1 Þ2 Q1 ð1Þ
0:5
N2 ¼ ðD1 =D2 Þ N1 ð2Þ
0:5
H2 ¼ ðD2 =D1 Þ H1 ð3Þ
where Q, D, N and H represent output, diameter, screw
speed and channel depth, respectively, and the indices 1
and 2 refer to the extruder being scaled to and from,
respectively. The helix angle and the total L/D are kept
constant.
Since shear rate (together with residence time) is a
very important parameter in mixing, this being a major
goal of the new miniature extruder, these rules were
adopted here. However, even when scaling down from
a conventional to a miniature laboratorial scale, the
proposed dimensions make no sense. For example,
assuming D1 ¼ 45 mm, Q1 ¼ 40 kg=h, N1 ¼ 50 rpm
and H1 ¼ 10 mm, for D2 ¼ 5 mm one obtains
Q2 ¼ 0:49 kg=h, N2 ¼ 150 rpm and H2 ¼ 3:3 mm. Not
only is still Q2 far too high, but D2 is physically inco-
herent with the value proposed for H2. Although these
results could eventually improve with the adoption of
another scaling-up rule, the design of miniature screws
using such an approach would most probably generate
solutions with reduced performance, as the validity of
some of the assumptions concerning flow and heat
transfer is jeopardized. For example:
– Since heat conduction is more efficient for small
thicknesses (the time for heat penetration is
approximately proportional to the square of the
distance [21]), the relative importance of conduc-
tive and dissipative heat during melting will be dif-
ferent for the miniature extruder. For example,
Rauwendaal [16] computes the Brinkman number
before selecting the correct specific scaling-up rule
for melting.
– According to Carley and McKelvey [22] and
Rauwendaal [16], the output and power consump-
tion in melt conveying increase by the cubic power
of the diameter ratio, if the channel depth and
width are increased in proportion to the diameter
ratio and the screw speed remains constant. How-
ever, as the barrel diameter decreases, the barrel
surface area to volume ratio increases, so that more
external heat can be transmitted and less contri-
bution from viscous dissipation is expected, with
766 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773
the resulting higher heat transfer efficiency than
anticipated [16].
Also, for smaller extruders maintaining constant L/D
and H/W ratios will result in progressively weaker
screws, which become too long for the resisting cross-
section (and more difficult to machine). Therefore, the
practical design of small screws may impose the use of
lower L/D ratios together with lower helix angles, to
preserve sufficient residence times.
Given the above difficulties and the current avail-
ability of sophisticated mathematical models of the glo-
bal plasticating process, which can predict with
reasonable accuracy the influence of geometry, operat-
ing conditions and polymer properties on the general
response of the system (e.g., output, degree of mixing,
power consumption, melt temperature, melting effi-
ciency), these will be used to assist the design of the
miniature screws. The routine used considers the plasti-
cating process from hopper to die, i.e., it includes the
sequential contribution of gravity solids flow in the
hopper, drag solids conveying, melting, melt conveying
in the screw and die flow. It has been validated via the
direct comparison between experimental data and the
corresponding theoretical predictions [23]. Application
to the present situation should be straightforward,
since not only is the melting model implemented quite
Fig. 3. Melting, temperature (set and melt values), pressure and shear rate axial profiles for the screw geometry shown (micro-
extruder).
general (it was proposed by Lindt et al. [24,25]), but
the combined influence of conductive and dissipative
heat is considered. Nevertheless, some limits to the
usual predictive capacity of the programme are expec-
ted, because:
– the small channel cross-section and the relatively
large solids power may not favour uniform drag
solids conveying in a fully filled channel, as
assumed by the modified Darnell and Moll theory
implemented in the plasticating model [26,27];
– given the highly efficient heat transfer, it is ques-
tionable whether truly Tadmor-type melting mech-
anism will develop [28];
– flow complexity increases with increasing channel
depth/width ratios, H/W, which puts at risk the
validity of the local 2D flow assumption.
The response of each tentative screw was examined
in terms of the main process performance parameters
identified above. The aim was to design screws: (i)
ensuring a sufficiently long solids conveying stage,
guaranteeing stable continuous drag, (ii) promoting
quick and efficient melting, so that a long pumping
zone can be used for mixing and (iii) minimizing vis-
cous dissipation. Fig. 3 and Table 1 show some of the
predictions (melt pressure, melt temperature, average
 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773 767

Table 1 – distributive mixing (computed in terms of the

Predicted response of the micro-extruder Weighted Average Total Strain, WATS [29])
N WATS Q (g/h) Tmelt Pmax Mechanical increases with increasing screw speed, due to the
v
( C) (MPa) Power (W) associated increase in shear rate and stability of
the melt conveying length;
20 163.6 7.6 280.0 7.5 12.9
– mass output increases roughly linearly with screw
40 165.2 15.6 280.1 13.1 44.8
60 171.3 23.1 280.2 15.3 64.3 speed. Moreover, at this screw rotating frequency
range, it seems conceivable to produce samples
with a few grams of material.
shear rate and melting—in terms of the solids to chan-
nel width ratio, X/W, are represented graphically) for
one specific screw geometry and also illustrate the effect
Fig. 4 and Table 2 show the equivalent predictions
of screw speed (20, 40 and 60 rpm) on the behaviour.
for a Leistritz LSM 36 laboratorial single screw
Extrusion of a polycarbonate Lexan 141 from GE at
v extruder (screw diameter 36 mm, L=D ¼ 24) fitted with
280 C (Tb) through a 1 mm die was assumed. The fol-
a general purpose screw, processing the same polymer
lowing features are evident:
under identical operating conditions. As expected,
– melting is essentially instantaneous, (largely) screw melting will be less efficient and screw speed will now
speed independent and triggered by the barrel tem- play a role. Nevertheless, the global predicted thermo-
perature, which confirms the efficiency of heat mechanical environment is comparable to that of the
transfer; miniature extruder in terms of the average shear rate,
– viscous dissipation is minimal (the melt tempera- melt temperature and relative shape of the axial press-
ture is similar to the barrel temperature, and an ure profile. Despite the large differences in L/D
v
increase of only 0.2 C in melt temperature is esti- between the two screws, distributive mixing in the lar-
mated when the screw speed increases from 20 to ger machine is estimated to be 25% on average more
60 rpm); efficient than in the small extruder, but this difference

Fig. 4. Melting, temperature (set and melt values), pressure and shear rate axial profiles for the screw geometry shown (Leistritz
LSM36).
768 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773

Table 2 ance with the inner barrel wall. Upon flow through this
Predicted response of the Leistritz LSM 36 extruder clearance, material will be exposed to the high stresses
N WATS Q (Kg/hr) Tmelt Pmax Mechanical required, for example, to rupture surviving agglomer-
v
( C) (MPa) Power (W) ates of small solid particles. However, since the blister
ring does not produce any positive drag flow, local
20 220.2 5.3 278.6 14.0 558.7
pressure drops are high and the output is reduced (and,
40 196.8 8.7 280.7 17.8 1176.6
more importantly, may become unstable, since the blis-
60 201.8 14.8 283.3 24.9 2663.1
ter ring does not wipe completely the barrel [30,31]).
Alternatively, a fluted mixing section can be used.
will decrease at higher screw speeds, due to the shorter Typically one or various barrier flights are placed along
pumping zones in the case of the bigger machine. the screw, so that the material is forced to pass in the
resulting clearance, where the required high shear stres-
ses and also some degree of elongational stresses are
2.3. Improving mixing
generated [31]. The first device of this type (known as a
As seen in the previous section, the conventional Maddock mixing section) had parallel inlet and outlet
v
general purpose three-zone screw depicted in Fig. 3 will channels, with a barrier helix angle of 90 [32].
induce moderate distributive mixing as, under normal Although uniform dispersive mixing was induced, high
operating conditions, recirculatory flow will develop pressure consumption occurred due to the lack of posi-
along the relatively extensive pumping zone. However, tive drag flow. The latter can be promoted if the bar-
since good dispersive mixing is mandatory for a num- riers run helically. Also, the efficiency of the dispersive
ber of systems, the insertion of a barrier mixing section mixing action can be enhanced by exposing the
seems appropriate. The simplest solution from a material to multiple passes through the barrier [31].
machining point of view is the use of a blister ring The barrier section represented in Fig. 5 bottom fol-
(Fig. 5, top), which consists of a cylindrical shoulder in lows the principles of the ‘‘shear refined (SR) module’’
the screw, perpendicular to its axis, with a small clear- proposed by Hong et al. [33] to study the flow of vari-

Fig. 5. Screws with blister ring (top) and multi-pass barrier (bottom).
 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773 769

ous polymer melts having different viscoelastic proper- All materials were milled in a Retsch mill at 14000 rpm
ties through barrier clearances. While the SR module immediately after immersion in liquid nitrogen in
contains multiple barrier flights located between one order to produce powders with an average size of
inlet and one outlet, slot, all features being parallel to approximately 0.5 mm. This is of course an impor-
the screw axis, all channels of the barrier section tant practical requirement of the micro-extruder.
developed in this work run helically. The barrier sec-
tion is 1D long and contains three barriers, each being
v
6 mm wide, making an helix angle of 60 and producing 4. Results and Discussion
a clearance of 0.1 mm.
4.1. General functional response
These geometric features obey the following design
rules proposed by Rauwendaal [31]: Fig. 6 presents the practical response of the micro-
pDNsinh extruder to changes in screw velocity, die resistance and
Wclearance > tmin ð4Þ screw design, when processing polystyrene. The top
120
  graph (conventional three-zone screw) shows an essen-
pDN k 1=n tially linear relationship between output and screw
dclearance < ð5Þ
60 smin speed, with the usual sensitivity to changes in barrel
where w, d, h are the length, thickness and helix angle
of the clearance, respectively, D is the device’s diam-
eter, N is the rotation speed, k and n are the constants
of the power law equation and tmin and smin are the
minimum exposure time and stress level required for
dispersion, respectively. The values of 0.2 s and 60 kPa,
suggested in the literature for carbon black dispersion
[31], were used in the calculations.

3. Materials

The flexibility of the micro-extruder was tested by

using a wide range of thermoplastics. This included
high density polyethylene, HDPE (Alcudia TR-135,
from Repsol), polycarbonate, PC (Lexan 141R, from
GE Plastics), polystyrene, PS (Edistir N2560, from Eni-
chem), a 50/50% w/w blend of starch with ethylene
vinyl alcohol, SEVA-C (Mater-BI 1128 RR, from
Novamont) and a 30/70% w/w blend of starch with
polycaprolactone, SPCL (Mater-BI ZI01U, from
Novamont). Table 3 shows the corresponding MFI
values at the processing temperatures tested.
The mixing capacity of the device was estimated
from the observation of extrudates of PS incorporating
10% w/w of a calcium carbonate filler (Carbocal LA
with 2.5 lm average size) and of immiscible blends of
polyamide (PA-6 Beatle 6 from BIP Chemicals) with
10% w/w EPDM (Kelton 740 from DSM).

Table 3
Characteristics of the materials tested

Material Density MFI (49 N) Processing Temp-

(g/cm3)
v
erature ( C)
v v v v
PS 1.04 10.11 (200 C) 200 /220 /240
v
PC 1.19 9.78 250
v
HDPE 0.94 0.69 160
v
SEVA-C 1.27 0.89 150
v Fig. 6. Processing PS in the micro-extruder: general
SPCL 1.22 2.57 110
response.
770 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773
temperature (which are due to the combined conflicting
effect of a decrease in die resistance and in conveying
capacity of the screw caused by a decrease in viscosity).
When the screw rotates at 40 rpm, the output is about
17 g per hour. Outputs as small as 3 g per hour are
possible at the lowest speed range. The second from
top graph illustrates the dependence of output on the
die resistance at constant temperature. Switching from
a 2 mm to a 1 mm diameter capillary die will cause a
reduction in output of circa 10%. Dies with radius (R)
bigger than 1 mm and L=R < 4 will create too little
resistance and promote output fluctuations. A decrease
in screw speed will obviously cause a decrease in output
and an increase in residence time, as seen in the third
from top graph of Fig. 6. Here, the y-axis represents
the initial residence time which, given the usual pulse-
shape of residence time distribution curves, can provide
an (easy to measure) indication of the average resi-
dence time behaviour. Thus, while at the low screw
speed range the material can take more than 6 min to
Fig. 7. Processing PS in the micro-extruder: predicted vs. measured outputs and melting profiles.
cross the extruder, at high speeds that value can
decrease to well below 1 min. Finally, the graph at the
bottom compares the performance (in terms of output
capacity) of the three-zone screw of Fig. 3 with that of
Fig. 5 bottom, i.e., with a built-in barrier mixing sec-
tion. Despite the helix arrangement, the presence of
four barriers consumes a significant portion of the
pressure generated, with the consequent decrease in
output. Nevertheless, the melt temperature at the die
exit remained unaffected. Given the purpose of the
micro-extruder and the anticipated increase in mixing
performance, this is in fact an advantage (for example,
at 40 rpm, the output is now 12 g/h).
A comparison between computer predictions and
experimental data using the three-zone screw is made in
Fig. 7. Real outputs are always higher than the pre-
dicted values, but differences are usually within 15%.
These are encouraging results, given the anticipated
limitations of the modeling routine discussed in the
previous section. Experiments also confirmed that melt-
 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773 771

Fig. 8. Processing various polymers in the micro-extruder: screw speed vs. output correlations.

ing is almost instantaneous, i.e., it is mainly due to the
very efficient heat transfer between the hot barrel and
the thin solid bed and, consequently, is little affected by
screw speed and barrel temperature (it is delayed by
increasing screw speeds and lower barrel temperatures).
This also facilitates good correlation between experi-
mental and predicted data.
Finally, Fig. 8 demonstrates that the micro-extruder
can be used successfully to process a variety of materi-
als. In all cases, output varies almost linearly with
screw speed. There is also good correlation between the
MFI values of the homopolymers (see Table 3) and the
relative output (the volumetric output is represented, to
account for the differences in density). The same is
valid for the polymer blends, the lack of coherence
between the two families of values being probably
related to the distinct non-Newtonian behaviour of the
blends.
4.2. Mixing
The dispersive action of the micro-extruder was
ascertained through the comparison of the morpholo-
gies of cross-sections of extrudates produced with the
conventional and with the mixing screw under identical
operating conditions.
Fig. 9 shows the results obtained for PS filled with
10% w/w calcium carbonate extruded at 40 rpm and
v
220 C through a 2 mm die. The gain in homogeneity

Fig. 9. Cross-sections of PS/CaCO3 processed with the conventional (a) and mixing (b) screws (optical microscopy).
772 J.A. Covas, P. Costa / Polymer Testing 23 (2004) 763–773
Fig. 10. Cross-sections of PA6/EPDM processed with the
conventional (a) and mixing (b) screws (scanning electron
microscopy).
provided by the barrier section seems significant. The
presence of some relatively large agglomerates could be
due to re-agglomeration during the last screw turns,
although it must be noticed that the gap of the barrier
is 50 lm thick, i.e., bigger than these structures. Fig. 10
reports similar data for an immiscible polyamide/rub-
ber blend. Again, the improvement in mixing provided
by the barrier section is important, the surviving rubber
agglomerates/particles being roughly half the size.
Coalescence of the dispersed phase is important in this
type of system. If the morphology of Fig. 10(b) is com-
pared with that produced by a co-rotating twin screw
extruder processing the same system [34], one may con-
clude that the rubber droplets are bigger in the case of
the micro-extruder. However, the morphology shown
in Fig. 10(b) is very similar to that present in the
second mixing zone of the same twin screw extruder,
i.e., the dispersive action of the micro-extruder seems
equivalent to that induced by a kneading block with
v
discs staggered at 90 [34].
Finally, it is worth nothing that the morphologies
illustrated in Figs. 8 and 9 show well distributed struc-
tures in the corresponding polymer matrix, i.e., the dis-
tributive mixing capacity of the micro-extruder is
satisfactory.
5. Conclusion
The micro-extrusion line presented in this paper is
capable of processing a wide variety of thermoplastics
and of producing a simple extrudate with only a few
grams of material in powder form. The thermo-mech-
anical stresses developed during processing are antici-
pated to be of the same order of magnitude of those
developed in bigger machines. Designing the small
screw used by the micro-extruder was hindered by the
difficulty in using scale-up factors, as some of the
assumptions concerning flow and heat transfer are jeo-
pardized at these small dimensions. Instead, the use of
plasticating models yielded good results.
Since a conventional three-zone screw was only able
to guarantee good distributive mixing, a multi-pass
barrier section was designed and inserted in the screw.
Experiments showed that the dispersive mixing
capacity of the new screw became similar to that of a
co-rotating twin screw extruder with a relatively short
kneading block, which is considered as quite satisfac-
tory for a small extruder.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank to Dr. Gaspar-Cunha
for the motivating discussions on single screw
extrusion modeling. The present work was done
under the framework of the Portuguese–Hungarian
Bilateral Intergovernmental S&T Cooperation Pro-
gramme (TeT-GRICES). Thanks are also due to the
Foundation for Science and Technology, for financing
the research reported herein through the IPC–Institute
for Polymers and Composites at Minho University.
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