Extrusion with Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Characterization of ABS/Mg (OH)(2)/Nanoclay Composites

Abstract

In this paper, carbon dioxide (CO2) is used to form a high-density microcellular thermoplastic foam structure in order to reduce polymer consumption and facilitate dispersion of Mg(OH)(2) and nanoclay fillers. A twin-screw extruder system was used to predistribute inorganic fillers into the ABS polymer, resulting in composite ABS/filler pellets. This is followed by the use of a single-screw extruder wherein supercritical carbon dioxide is introduced into the formulation. Finally, the resulting foam ABS/filler/CO2 pellets are injection- molded into test samples. The structure and properties of the composites are characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Furthermore, ABS/Mg(OH)(2)/nanoclay polymer composite samples are tested to obtain their yield and tensile strengths, elastic moduli, yield and tensile elongations, izod impact strengths, hardness values, heat deflection temperatures (HDT), Vicat softening points, and melt flow indices (MFI). These tests reveal that for the overall reduction in the amount of polymer in the samples, material properties did not generally deteriorate and even showed improvements in some areas. Moreover, resulting injection-molded samples have been shown to possess dimensional integrity due to the continued expansion of CO2 during the molding operation.