A Research On How To Manufacture Thermoplastic Elastomer (TPE) With Dynamic Vulcanization

Thermoplastic elastomers (TPE for abbreviation) are usually called the third generation rubber. It possesses the characters of both plastics and rubber, which means "that in normal temperatures it demonstrates elasticity of rubber while in high temperatures it demonstrates plasticity. Compared with conventional thermoset rubber, TPE is easier to be handled with and requires no vulcanization. Therefore, TPE is very advantageous in terms of energy saving, technology simplification, labor intension decrease and benefit improvement.Nowadays, manufacturing technology of TPE in our country lags behind the world advanced ones. Twin-rotor continuous mixers are a kind of advanced continuous mixers that characterize both Banbury mixers and twin-screw extruders. It can process materials at a very fast screw speed even at lOOOrpm, and its temperature control is very precise. Because the manufacturing of TPE requires facilities to provide high speed and precisely controlled temperatures, the twin-rotor continuous mixers is the first choice considering its specific characters.At first, in this paper we studied the microstructure, characters and uses of TPE. Secondly, difficulties in manufacturing TPE were discussed in terms of mixing and dynamic vulcanization. Thirdly, we studied the mix theory of twin rotor continuous mixers as the guide of experimental research. Last and the most important point is that, by a lot of experiments, this study lead to a way to produce TPE with twin-rotor continuous mixers.