서강대학교

초록/요약

Supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) offers several advantages including non-toxicity, environmentally friendliness (no ozone depletion), high solubility similar to organic solvents like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Furthermore supercritical CO2 is recovered easily by pressure release, and it is expected to be used as a plasticizing agent to lower the viscosity of various polymer melts. To apply supercritical CO2 to polymer process, it is necessary to know how supercritical CO2 affects properties of polymer during the process. In this work, we studied on the effect of supercritical CO2 on rheological properties of EXACT 5361 which has both plastic and elastomeric properties. EXACT 5361 has excellent impact strength at low temperature and excellent toughness, and because of its great elasticity, EXACT 5361 is widely used in the polymer industry. A rotational rheometer has been adapted to measure the viscosities of EXACT 5361 which absorbed CO2 under high temperature and pressure conditions. To inspect effects of temperature and pressure on the solubility of supercritical CO2, rheological properties were measured under various temperatures and pressures. We also studied on effect of supercritical CO2 on rheological properties of polymer nanocomposite under various temperature and pressure conditions. And we observed that viscosities of polymer and polymer nanocomposite were dramatically reduced by CO2 addition through this study.