Flumini, Francesco (2025) CFD analysis of the depolymerization of a dilute solution of two polymers using twin-screw extrusion. Integration Project, Industrial Engineering and Management.
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Abstract
Polymer processing, more particularly polymer extrusion, is one of the fundamental aspects in the downstream industry. Understanding how extrusion works, being able to predict the fluid's behavior during the process, and optimizing the process parameters to minimize energy consumption is of the utmost importance. This thesis constitutes one of the first attempts at modeling depolymerization reactions with CFD while linking the fluid dynamics, heat transfer, and chemical reaction phenomena to one another. This is done, on one hand, by using a complex viscosity model for shear-thinning/-thickening inelastic non-Newtonian fluids dependent on temperature, shear rate, and species concentrations. On the other hand, a linearly-combined exponential kinetic model is used to include both thermal- and mechanical- induced chain scission. For the sake of completeness, a polymerization reaction of the depolymerized oligomers is also investigated via injection of a cross-linking agent from a secondary inlet to the extruder. The results show that coupling of all physical phenomena is imperative, solving them separately offsets greatly the practicality of the solution. Also, it is crucial to simulate accurately the transient startup phase of the extruder to ensure that the desired product quality is achieved.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Integration Project) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Druetta, P.D. and Younas, N. |
| Degree programme: | Industrial Engineering and Management |
| Thesis type: | Integration Project |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Jul 2025 09:42 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Jul 2025 09:42 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/35760 |
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