Industrial mixing technology blending

The emphasis in research and technological development of new products in the polymer industry has changed from synthesis of novel monomers to blending polymers in order to obtain desirable performance properties at a dial-in cost. Polymer blends offer improved performance/cost ratios and flexibility to tailor-make the product to suit customer needs. Polymer blends are intimate mixtures of two or more polymers. The individual components may be melt-mixed, solution blended, co-precipitated, controlled devolatilized, or coagulated before final processing. Finished articles are converted from blends by extrusion or molding processing operations. 

While on the industrial scale at least the calcium sulfate is interground when producing a portland cement, different powders often need to be blended in laboratory studies in order to obtain a homogeneous mix. Such a mix could be either a binder or a dry mix mortar. Blending is extensively treated in textbooks related to particle technology, and the reader can be... 

The processing technologies for elastomeric blends, thermoplastic elastomer-based on mechanical mixing, and elastomer-plastic vulcanizates are distinctly different. Depending on the type and nature of blend, size, and their final application, a wide range of processing equipment is now in use both industrially as well as in laboratory scale preparation. 

The polymer blend carbonization method will become an important tool for producing carbon membranes, with mixed-matrix materials, to overcome the challenges and limitations of membrane technology used in the gas separation industry. 

To sum up, a proof of principle was obtained that conductive, industrially relevant CNT/PPO/PS nanocomposites can successfully be prepared by two main routes based on latex technology. The first one consists of directly mixing SDS-CNT dispersions with a PPO/PS latex. The second one is based on the use of a CNT/PS masterbatch, subsequently mixed with PPO/PS by extrusion in the melt. This second approach is particularly interesting since it opens the possibility to extend the range of application of the latex concept to the [commercial] production of nanocomposites based on blends that cannot [easily] be obtained in a latex form. 

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