THE IMPACT OF PROCESSING AIDS ON PLA EXTRUSION PERFORMANCE

摘要

The interest in extruding PLA (Polylactide resin) is growing for several reasons. These include the fact that the polymer comes from a renewable resource and that it is a degradable, environmentally friendly material. Marketability of disposable products is certainly enhanced by either factor. This paper will give the results of a data collection effort on a single screw extruder that was designed to determine optimum screw design and processing conditions for PLA with and without a processing enhancement additive. The data was developed on a large enough machine to allow accurate scaling to common production extruder sizes.