Depressurization, supercritical drying

However, even with carbon dioxide as a drying agent, the supercritical drying conditions can affect the properties of a product. Other important drying variables include the path to the critical point, composition of the drying medium, and depressurization. 

Figure 2.7. Typical depressurization crack (perpendicular to the largest surface) experimented by the silica gel during supercritical drying (illustrated here on a 1 cm thick wet silica tile having a liquid permeability between 5 and 10 nm, dried with supercritical CO2 at 313 K and 90 bar, and submitted to an autoclave depressurization of 0.15 bar min ). Courtesy of Rigacci A.

Supercritical and Freeze Drying. To eliminate surface tension related drying stresses in fine pore materials such as gels, ware can be heated in an autoclave until the Hquid becomes a supercritical fluid, after which drying can be accompHshed by isothermal depressurization to remove the fluid (45,69,72) (see Supercritical fluid). In materials that are heat sensitive, the ware can be frozen and the frozen Hquid can be removed by sublimation (45,69). 

Supercritical fluids have also been used purely as the solvent for polymerization reactions. Supercritical fluids have many advantages over other solvents for both the synthesis and processing of materials (see Chapter 6), and there are a number of factors that make scCCH a desirable solvent for carrying out polymerization reactions. As well as being cheap, nontoxic and nonflammable, separation of the solvent from the product is achieved simply by depressurization. This eliminates the energy-intensive drying steps that are normally required after the reaction. Carbon dioxide is also chemically relatively inert and hence can be used for a wide variety of reactions. For example, CO2 is inert towards free radicals and this can be important in polymerization reactions since there is then no chain transfer to the solvent. This means that solvent incorporation into the polymer does not take place, giving a purer material. 

The PCA process uses supercritical fluid drying to help preserve fine microstructures in the material. Supercritical fluid drying is a technique that has been used for many years to dry biological materials and, more recently, aerogels (qv). The original solvent is replaced by exchange with a supercritical fluid, such as C02, and the system is depressurized above the critical temperature of the SCF. SCFs have no vapor—liquid interface. Thus fine microstructures are... 

VDF polymerization technology based on supercritical or liquid carbon dioxide as polymerization media has been reported. This technology offers an advantage in the polymer isolation step where a clean dry polymer is produced simply by depressurization. The residual monomer(s) and CO2 can be recycled back to the reactor. The PVDF having a multimodal molecular weight distribution is produced in CO2. Adequate CO2 density... 

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