Power consumption in the compacting process of polymer particulate solids in a vane extruder

Abstract An innovational vane extruder made polymeric materials endure an elongation stress that was much larger than the shearing stress in the extrusion process. The operating principle of the vane extruder was completely different than that of conventional screw extruders. As the first stage of polymer processing in the vane extruder, the process of solids conveying was composed of feeding, compacting, and discharging. Most of the energy was consumed in the compacting process of polymer particulate solids in this stage. A mathematical model was developed to analyze the power consumption in the process. The model showed that the power consumption was mainly influenced by the structural parameters of the vane extruder, including the rotor diameter, eccentricity, and axial width of the vane unit. The analysis indicated that more energy was used to generate pressure in the vane extruder than in a screw extruder. The theoretical model was verified by the experimental results. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013