Measurement of Gas Solubility in Polymers

A Batch Apparatus

Polymer Processing Institute

Solubility and Diffusivity of gases in polymer are the two important physical properties which determine the success of the foamability of polymer. These properties are also used to characterize the barrier property of the polymer in food packaging application. Engineers at PPI have developed unique method to measure these properties.

 Custom designed high pressure vessels are used for off-line solubility measurements.  The gas solubility in polymer is calculated by measuring the weight gain of the polymer samples after saturation time. Various thermodynamic models can be applied to correlate and predict the solubility data over wider range of pressure and temperature.

 

For example, the figure shows the solubility of CO2 in polypropylene (PP) at three different temperatures.The line shows the Henry’s law correlation for the data.

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