Experimental and Simulation Study on the Dissolved Amount and Dissolution Rate of Supercritical CO2 in Polystyrene Melt

Duyang Wang; Xingyuan Huang; Zhennan Cai; Wenling Wang; Long Wang; Sipeng Wang; Mengshan Li

doi:10.1021/acsomega.9b03148

Experimental and Simulation Study on the Dissolved Amount and Dissolution Rate of Supercritical CO₂ in Polystyrene Melt

ACS Omega. 2019 Dec 19;4(27):22464-22474. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.9b03148. eCollection 2019 Dec 31.

Authors

Duyang Wang¹, Xingyuan Huang^{1

2}, Zhennan Cai¹, Wenling Wang¹, Long Wang¹, Sipeng Wang¹, Mengshan Li³

Affiliations

¹ Jiangxi Key Laboratory of High-Performance Precision Molding, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China.
² Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Polymer Micro-Nano Manufacturing and Devices, East China University of Technology, Nanchang 330013, China.
³ Institute of Physics and Electronic Information, Gannan Normal University, Ganzhou 341000, China.

Abstract

The amount of supercritical CO₂ dissolved in polystyrene (PS), dissolution rate, and solubility under static conditions at 170-190 °C and 7.5-9.5 MPa were calculated by utilizing volume-changing-method experiments and numerical simulations. By comparison, the instantaneous error can be guaranteed to be less than 15%. The two results are in good agreement, and the reliability of the simulation method is verified. Based on the obtained results, another parameter was added to the tested model, and the dissolution rate of supercritical CO₂ in PS under different shear conditions was numerically simulated. The effects of temperature, pressure, and shear rate on dissolution were analyzed. The results show that when the temperature and pressure are constant, the dissolution rate of supercritical CO₂ in PS with shear increases significantly compared with that without shear. The conditions that enable the maximum dissolution rate are 190 °C, 9.5 MPa, and a shear rate of 240/π. With the abovementioned pressure and shear rate conditions, the maximum solubility can be obtained under the temperature of 170 °C.