Twin Screw Extrusion

Book excerpt: Twin screw extrusion has become an important part of polymer processing technology. Twin screw extruders are widely used for reactive, procesing, including both polymerization and grafting reactions, for compounding, blending, devolatilization, as well as for thermoplastic final shaping operations, particularly profile extrusion. The purpose of this book is to carefully describe each of these three types of machines and the historical development of their technologies. The book also provides insight into the efforts to model/simulate the flow characteristics of these machines and into the experimental studies of their machine characteristics. This book is unique in clearly distinguishing between the different types of twin screw extruders on the market and in reviewing their capabilities. It is the authors' primary intention to provide a balanced but in-depth overview of twin screw extrusion technology to chemists, engineers and technologists alike