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Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications

Highly filled plastics may offer a suitable solution within the production process for bipolar plates. However, the compounding of conductive additives and the homogeneous mixing of the plastic melt, as well as the accurate prediction of the material behavior, pose a major challenge for polymer engi...

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Autores principales: Celik, Alptekin, Willems, Fabian, Tüzün, Mustafa, Marinova, Svetlana, Heyn, Johannes, Fiedler, Markus, Bonten, Christian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10302241/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37376235
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15122589
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author Celik, Alptekin
Willems, Fabian
Tüzün, Mustafa
Marinova, Svetlana
Heyn, Johannes
Fiedler, Markus
Bonten, Christian
author_facet Celik, Alptekin
Willems, Fabian
Tüzün, Mustafa
Marinova, Svetlana
Heyn, Johannes
Fiedler, Markus
Bonten, Christian
author_sort Celik, Alptekin
collection PubMed
description Highly filled plastics may offer a suitable solution within the production process for bipolar plates. However, the compounding of conductive additives and the homogeneous mixing of the plastic melt, as well as the accurate prediction of the material behavior, pose a major challenge for polymer engineers. To support the engineering design process of compounding by twin-screw extruders, this present study offers a method to evaluate the achievable mixing quality based on numerical flow simulations. For this purpose, graphite compounds with a filling content of up to 87 wt.-% were successfully produced and characterized rheologically. Based on a particle tracking method, improved element configurations were found for twin-screw compounding. Furthermore, a method to characterize the wall slip ratios of the compounded material system with different filler content is presented, since highly filled material systems often tend to wall slip during processing, which could have a very large influence on accurate prediction. Numerical simulations of the high capillary rheometer were conducted to predict the pressure loss in the capillary. The simulation results show a good agreement and were experimentally validated. In contrast to the expectation, higher filler grades showed only a lower wall slip than compounds with a low graphite content. Despite occurring wall slip effects, the developed flow simulation for the design of slit dies can provide a good prediction for both low and high filling ratios of the graphite compounds.
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spelling pubmed-103022412023-06-29 Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications Celik, Alptekin Willems, Fabian Tüzün, Mustafa Marinova, Svetlana Heyn, Johannes Fiedler, Markus Bonten, Christian Polymers (Basel) Article Highly filled plastics may offer a suitable solution within the production process for bipolar plates. However, the compounding of conductive additives and the homogeneous mixing of the plastic melt, as well as the accurate prediction of the material behavior, pose a major challenge for polymer engineers. To support the engineering design process of compounding by twin-screw extruders, this present study offers a method to evaluate the achievable mixing quality based on numerical flow simulations. For this purpose, graphite compounds with a filling content of up to 87 wt.-% were successfully produced and characterized rheologically. Based on a particle tracking method, improved element configurations were found for twin-screw compounding. Furthermore, a method to characterize the wall slip ratios of the compounded material system with different filler content is presented, since highly filled material systems often tend to wall slip during processing, which could have a very large influence on accurate prediction. Numerical simulations of the high capillary rheometer were conducted to predict the pressure loss in the capillary. The simulation results show a good agreement and were experimentally validated. In contrast to the expectation, higher filler grades showed only a lower wall slip than compounds with a low graphite content. Despite occurring wall slip effects, the developed flow simulation for the design of slit dies can provide a good prediction for both low and high filling ratios of the graphite compounds. MDPI 2023-06-06 /pmc/articles/PMC10302241/ /pubmed/37376235 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15122589 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Celik, Alptekin
Willems, Fabian
Tüzün, Mustafa
Marinova, Svetlana
Heyn, Johannes
Fiedler, Markus
Bonten, Christian
Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications
title Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications
title_full Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications
title_fullStr Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications
title_full_unstemmed Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications
title_short Compounding, Rheology and Numerical Simulation of Highly Filled Graphite Compounds for Potential Fuel Cell Applications
title_sort compounding, rheology and numerical simulation of highly filled graphite compounds for potential fuel cell applications
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10302241/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37376235
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym15122589
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