Biofuels from biomass have the potential to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels. An efficient pretreatment method is required to accomplish the target of the Energy Act 2005. Extrusion could be a viable continuous pretreatment method to be explored. The objectives of the current study were to investigate the influence of screw speed and barrel temperature on sugar recovery from the selected w...

This paper investigates foam granulation in a twin screw extruder as a new continuous wet granulation technique for pharmaceutical powder drug formulations. Foamed aqueous binder has a reportedly lower soak-to-spread ratio than drop or spray liquid addition in batch granulation. This work demonstrates a twin screw extruder configuration for foam granulation and subsequently compares the new app...

Polymeric nanocomposites (PNC) are binary mixtures of strongly interacting, inorganic platelets dispersed in a polymeric matrix. For full exfoliation, the thermodynamic miscibility is required. There are three basic methods of organically-modified clay dispersion that might result in PNC: (1) in polymer solution (followed by solvent removal), (2) in a monomer (followed by polymerization), and (...

We provide a non-interleaving operational semantics for the pi-calculus as asynchronous transition systems, which generalizes the standard interleaving structural operational semantics and unfolds to standard, stable prime event structures. We follow the approach taken by Mukund and Nielsen in providing non-interleaving semantics for CCS by infering the so-called prefixing (structural or subjec...

The flow fields in polymer processing exhibit complex behavior with chaotic characteristics, due in part to the non-linearity of the field equations describing them. In chaotic flows fluid elements are highly sensitive to their initial positions and velocities. A fundamental understanding of such characteristics is essential for optimization and design of equipment used for distributive mixing....

Chronic treatment with fluoxetine or other so-called serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs) or with a lithium salt "lithium", carbamazepine, or valproic acid, the three classical antibipolar drugs, exerts a multitude of effects on astrocytes, which in turn modulate astrocyte-neuronal interactions and brain function. In the case of the SSRIs, they are to a large extent due...

In this work, the influence of composition and cold-drawing on nanoand micro-scale morphology and tensile mechanical properties of PE/organoclay nanocomposite fibers was investigated. Nanocomposites were prepared by melt compounding in a twin-screw extruder, using a maleic anhydride grafted linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE–g–MA) and an organomodified montmorillonite (Dellite 67G) at three...

Rheological properties of intermediate moisture (35-45% wet basis) doughs from pregelatinized and raw wheat starch blends of various ratios were characterized using off-line capillary rheometry and online slit-die extrusion. In the case of capillary rheometer, viscosity of blends decreased by up to 50% as pregel starch concentration increased from 5 to 45%, whereas tests could not be conducted ...

PLA is one of the most promising bio-compostable and bio-degradable thermoplastic polymers made from renewable sources. PLA is generally produced by ring opening polymerization (ROP) of lactide using the metallic/bimetallic catalyst (Sn, Zn, and Al) or other organic catalysts in a suitable solvent. In this work, reactive extrusion experiments using stannous octoate Sn(Oct)2 and tri-phenyl phosp...

A single-step, extrusion-based process to depolymerize poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is being investigated. The depolymeriza tion is effected by reacting ethylene glycol (EG) with the high molecular weight polymer (glycolysis). The ethylene glycol causes chain scission by attacking the ester linkages along the polymer backbone. The objective is to recover purified low molecular weight olig...