Deliverables Silanisation reactor The silanisation reactor is planned to be applied in the tire industry for the production of tread compounds for silica tires. Today's production of silica compounds by use of a regular internal mixer requires about twice as much mixing time and one to three additional mixing steps compared to conventional carbon black filled compounds. The reason is that a chemical reaction (silanisation) needs to be performed that requires specific process conditions. Compared to a conventional internal mixer, the device is specially adapted to the requirements of the silanisation reaction: It combines an improved temperature control, an exhaust system for the reaction products and a better distributive mixing behaviour. The device can be integrated into an existing mixing line and is able to handle the typical batch weight in the mixing room of about 220kg. To allow a fast silanisation reaction without causing pre-scorch, the device is able to hold the batch temperature within a tight range (<3°C) over a time period of about 5 minutes Besides this concept of a new complete machine new rotor concepts have also been developed and tested to enable existing mixers to be upgraded. Furthermore, a concept to support the silanisation process with special air-injection devices has been developed. This concept allows modifying conventional mixing lines. Last but not least a concept for a sensor had been tested successfully (in pilot production scale). This sensor allows measuring the emitted ethanol during the silanisation within the mixer. Pilot line for direct extrusion The availability of free flowing polymers offers the rubber industry the opportunity to introduce continuous compounding, as it is already known from the processing of thermoplastic materials. From the economic point of view this becomes interesting if process steps can be summarised and eliminated. The concept of the direct extrusion line is the integration of the functions of 'compounding' and 'extrusion'. The combination of a continuous compounding device (chosen based on the results of an independent machine concept screening for continuous compounding) and an extruder had been tested for hose production. A study on the costs for continuous compounding and batch mixing had been performed and published. Furthermore the different concepts for polymer grinding and the related costs have been analysed. An on-line rheometer for the continuous indication of the rheological properties has also been developed and tested for the pilot-compounding line. Searching for OpenAIRE data... There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE No results available
