Extraction of Contamination of Automotive Gas Tank Material by Extrusion with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

✍ Scribed by Walter Michaeli; Bernd Rothe; Athanassios Elas

• Book ID: 102939859
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 757 KB
• Volume: 294
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1438-7492
• DOI: 10.1002/mame.200900095

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

During their working life, plastics can be exposed to contaminating media which limit their recyclability. A continuous extraction process with supercritical CO~2~ has been developed. Contaminated material is extruded through two twin‐screw extruders in a cascade. The first extruder purifies with scCO~2~ and the second extruder is for degassing and hot‐cut pelletisation. Post‐consumer automotive diesel fuel tank material has been processed. A direct flow and a counter‐flow process with different screw configurations have been developed. Characterisation has been performed by headspace gas chromatography. Results show that contaminants were extracted out of the plastic for both process variants. However, direct flow yielded better extraction efficiency.

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