The University of Auckland

Project #95: Parametric Study of Polymer Pulverisation for Production of Plastic Powders

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Description:

The use of polymer powders for various processing methods is essential for the quality assurance of the final plastic products. However, the raw polymeric materials often come in the pellet form, so the process of pulverisation is necessary to turn the polymer pellets into powders of various sizes. A large-scale commercial pulveriser often has more complete parametric control and setup to achieve the required particle size for the powders produced, whereas a lab-scale pulveriser often only comes with simple controls but not clear guidelines which hinder the production of powders with controlled sizes. In this project, a recently acquired lab-scale pulveriser will be used to produce polymer powders of various sizes and types. However, the operating parameters for such a wide range polymer powder production have not been provided with an operation manual of the machine, it is, therefore, necessary to carry out a systematic study on the operating parameters for successful production of polymer powders of various sizes. The success of such production will be judged by the quality - size uniformity and the production rate of the powdery materials. The parameters to be studied are the pulverising speed (rpm), the material feed rate (g/min), the gap size of the two pulverising plates and the use or not of liquid nitrogen for cryogenic pulverisation.

Type:

Undergraduate

Outcome:

The expected outcome will be an operation map containing types of polymer, operation parameters and the corresponding resulted particle sizes or size distribution.

Prerequisites

None

Specialisations

Categories

Supervisor

Team

Lab

CACM - Strength of Materials Lab (Newmarket 902 Lvl 3, Lab)