An experimental validation of diffusion-based devolatilization models in extruders using post-industrial and post-consumer plastic waste

Extrusion is a key process in mechanical recycling. In a degassing step, volatile components, including all impurities and moisture, are removed from a polymer melt to ensure consistently high quality of the recyclates. Predicting devolatilization performance is therefore of interest in the design of degassing screws; in the plastics industry, it also plays an important role in the transition from a linear to a circular economy. Using two different devolatilization models, we first modelled the degassing process of a lab-scale twin-screw extruder and an industrial-scale recycling single-screw extruder. We then predicted the devolatilization performance of both machines, validated the results with experimental data obtained from emissions tests carried out with post-industrial and post-consumer polypropylene materials and performed linear regression analysis to compare our two models in terms of predictive quality. Our results showed that both models are equally suitable for reliable prediction of the devolatilization performance.