Optimisation of polymer foam bubble expansion in extruder by resident time distribution approach

In this work, we used the Residence Time Distribution (RTD) to study the polystyrene foaming during an extrusion process. The extruder associated with a gear pump is simply and quantitatively described by three continuoustly stirred tank reactors with recycling loops and one plug-flow reactor. The blowing agent used is CO2 and its obtained by thermal decomposition of a chemical blowing agent (CBA). This approach allows to optimize the density of the foam in accordance with the CBA kinetic of decomposition.