pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S02 - Extrusion and extrusion processes
Keynote Presentation
 
 

Continuous extrusion of celluloid film

Dubois Charles (1)*, Comtois Etienne (2)

(1) Polytechnique Montreal - Quebec - Canada, (2) General Dynamics Canada Ordnance and Tatctical Systems - Quebec - Canada

Celluloid is one of the oldest industrial plastic. In celluloid, nitrocellulose is plasticized by camphor to give a material of limited thermoplasticity. Traditionally, celluloid is produced by a combination of mixing of the primary ingredients in an internal batch mixer followed by a final compounding in a twin roll mills apparatus. A final consolidation step in a heated press is also required before slicing the resulting block into thin sheets. Such a process is ill-adapted to the current North American industrial environment for both safety and economical reasons. In this work we report a novel continuous process for producing celluloid sheets using a twin-screw extruder and ancillary equipment. Extrusion of this material brings particular challenges in light of the fire hazard linked to nitrocellulose. The sheet die for the solvent-assisted extrusion process has been specially designed to ensure an uniform temperature in the film by recalling to numerical simulation of both the momentum and heat transfer equations in a 3D computational domain. The rheology of the celluloid compounds was determined from capillary flow measurements. Our results demonstrate that the choice and concentration of solvents, as well as the extrusion temperature are the most important process parameters controlling the quality of the extruded film.