Facilities

Conventional Oven, Thermo scientific, the temperature range from room temperature up to 200 ºC.

It is used for drying the polymers, natural fibers, biomass, processing of polymer and polymer composites. Drying the polymers, natural fibers and biomass is very critical for some of the composite materials and certain applications. This oven is also used in the synthesis of carbon nanoparticles from lignin through controlled carbonization process as drying unit for intermediate samples.

Vacuum Oven, Thermo-scientific, Napco, vacuum oven up to 250 ºC.  

In the vacuum oven, the thermal treatments occur in an airtight chamber under required amount of vacuum. The vacuum oven can be used to have reactions under vacuum or chosen gas system.  This vacuum oven is used to dry the samples at noticeably lower temperatures, by which degradation of the materials is eliminated. This vacuum oven is used for different applications like moisture determination, out gassing solids and liquids, aging tests, drying of paper, rubber, and textiles, and desiccating.

Tubular Furnace Carbolite, equipped with Eurotherm temperature controller model 3216P1.

It is used for the synthesis of all kinds of carbon nanoparticles. The temperature can go up to 1200?C. The quartz working tube can be used in high temperature heating. The present work tube is coupled with high performance gas tight end seals, which enables processing the samples in closed gaseous environments and partial vacuums. This temperature controller enables to make various heating programs. Insulating plugs are used to reduce the heat loss in the oven.

Universal Cutting Mill Fritsch GmbH, known as Universal Cutting Mill PULVERISETTE 19.

Biofibres, biomass and other fillers are often in non-uniform shape and they have large particle sizes. Cutting and grinding helps in reducing the size of these biomaterials for composites. This pulverizer is capable of comminuting soft to medium-hard, dry grinding materials as well as fibrous materials and plastics. The smaller particle size helps to make better composite materials.

Lab-Scale Twin Screw Extruder, DSM Xplore 15 ml Microcompounder, including film unit

Polymers and natural fibers are combined using twin screw extruders by the melt processing of polymers. In our research, processing biopolymers with agricultural biomass and furthermore blending these biopolymers with other conventional plastics and polymers is the fundamental research topic. So twin screw extruder is the essential component of our current research. This extruder is the laboratory scale extruder which helps to formulate the best composition for the manufacturing of bioproducts.

Lab-Scale Injection Moulding, DSM Xplore 12 ml Injection Moulding Machine accompanied with the DSM Xplore 15 ml microcompounder.

After engineering the polymers and natural fiber composites in the twin screw extruder, they are moulded to different geometries and shapes according to the specific standards for testing the mechanical properties by using this injection moulding equipment. The molten polymer and composites are injected to different moulds using certain amount of pressure.

Haake Mixer, HAAKE POLYLAB QC, an advanced mixer system is manufactured by Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Any increase in polymer melt temperature during the test due to the shear introduced is recorded by a separate thermocouple. The recorded “Rheogram” (torque and melt temperature vs. time at constant speed) is characteristic for different material types and blends. It can be used as a fingerprint in quality control for outgoing and incoming product inspections. Mixer test can be preprogrammed and data can be analyzed using the software i.e. Polysoft OS.

Twin Screw Extruder, Labtech Engineering Company, 26 mm Twins Screw Extruder,

After optimizing the polymer processing and polymer blend/composite composition, we go to the next step to produce in bigger quantities to make big parts. This extruder is used for the scale-up for the polymers. This equipment helps in processing, formulating, mixing, blending, and compounding of thermoplastic polymers with additives, devolatilization and reactive extrusion. The extruder has also water bath and pelletizer. The final products are obtained in the form of pellets by the pelletizer in the end of the extruder.

Injection Moulding Machine, ENGEL100TL, Engel 100 ton Tie-bar less (Engel100TL) injection moulding machine.

After getting the pellets that are produced in the Lab-Tech extruder, moulded parts can be produced using this injection moulding equipment. Injection moulding is a unique low cost technique which converts raw plastic pellets into final moulded parts and it is the most common, convenient and cost effective method of part manufacturing. The moulded parts can be testing samples or it can be any shape according to the desired application. This big industrial scale injection  moulding machine helps to produce industrial scale parts.

Compression moulding, Carver

Compression moulding is used for many different polymer systems including the thermoplastics and thermosetting resins. For thermoplastics, and their composites, the materials are melted in the compression moulding between the heated plates and desired shapes can be given with respect to the mould designed. The compression moulding is used mainly for the thermosetting resins to cure them at elevated temperatures. The thermosetting resins are easily shaped according to the mould designed after their curing in the compression moulding.

Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Mould (VARTM)

Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Mould (VARTM) is a manufacturing method for thermosetting resins having potential advantage of relatively low cost with sufficiently high volume fractions of reinforcement and the process can be readily applied to large-scale structures. However, the vacuum assisted RTM (VARTM) processes depend on the following factors such as, how well the preform is placed in the mould, the uniformity of curing, and ensuring the resin fills all parts of the mould without voids. VARTM uses the vacuum to draw the resin into the mould cavity. In addition, the VARTM mould is usually an open mould and the fiber preform is sealed between the open moulds. VARTM is more labor intensive but can save great investment in mould tooling thus is suitable for low-mid volume production for large composite parts. This instrument will contribute to BDDC, in making different types of sturdy products using thermosetting resin and natural fibers.

VARTM mould	Resin Trap	Vacuum Pump

Sonicator, Sonics&Materials Inc., Vibra-Cell High Intensity Ultrasonic Liquid Processor

Sonication is the act of applying sound (usually ultrasound) energy to agitate particles in a sample, for various purposes. In our laboratory, it is usually applied using an ultrasonic probe, colloquially known as a sonicator. Sonication is used to speed dissolution, by breaking intermolecular interactions. It is very important part of the dispersion of nanoparticles in the solutions and polymers.

Homogenizer, Fisher Scientific PowerGen 125

This is a high speed, high shear homogenizer which can go to 30,000 rpm to disintegrate the tissue cultures, cellulose materials and other biological materials. The cellulose materials can be easily dispersed in certain polymer solutions. It is quite convenient method to have fine dispersion of cellulose materials.

Polisher, Leco

With this polisher, the materials especially for our research, polymers can be easily polished and fine surfaces of polymers can be prepared. It is a multi-purpose polisher including metal polishing but we mainly use to polish the thermosetting polymers that we produce.

Thermal Gravimetric Analyzer, TA-Instruments, Q-500.

It is used to study the thermal degradation of materials and fulfills the pre-processing requirements of the polymer. This instrument measures weight changes of a material as a function of temperature/time under a controlled atmosphere.  It is used to evaluate the thermal stability and decomposition temperature of various polymers and biomasses. This information is very basic requirement in the biocomposite processing. Besides, the instrument is able to perform the composition analysis through various test modes to provide a result with optimum accuracy. Instrument’s low-mass furnace, ultra-sensitive thermobalance and efficient horizontal purge gas system (with mass flow control) cause the instrument to perform better. Inert (nitrogen, Helium, Argon etc.) as well as reactive (air or oxygen) purge gases could be used in this instrument.

Differential Scanning Calorimeter, TA-Instruments, Q-200

It is used to study the thermal transition in different polymeric materials. It shows heat flows and temperatures associated with the thermal transitions in materials. Properties measured by DSC Differential Scanning Calorimeters techniques include glass transitions, "cold" crystallization, phase changes, crystallization, melting, cure behaviour/ kinetics, product stability and oxidative stability. It is specifically meant for investigation, selection, quality control and end-use performance evaluation of materials in research and commercial production applications. It can be used from -90 to 725 ºC. It can be further used to conduct Oxygen Induction Test under certain oxygen atmosphere.

Dynamic Mechanical Analysis, TA-Instruments, Q-800

Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer measures the mechanical properties of materials as a function of temperature, time and frequency.  As materials, including polymers, behave both like an elastic solid and a viscous fluid, thus viscoelastic behaviour is an important property of polymeric materials. DMA provides results for materials modulus, viscous and elastic properties, stress/strain behaviour of material at different temperature and frequency ranges. These results are quite useful information It provides multiple modes of deformation i.e. dual/single cantilever, 3-point bending, film tension, compression etc. The clamps are calibrated individually and facilitate easy sample mounting. It can be used from -150 to 600 °C.  

Mechanical Testing, Instron 3382, Tensile Testing (Rigid and Film Testing with temperature controlled environmental chamber) and Flexural Testing

Tensile, and flexural properties are very important for any material applications. Polymers are blended with other polymers or filled with biofillers and nanofillers to obtain improved properties. Instron is equipped with accessories and other facilities are ordered from Instron USA to ensure a wide range of test can be done on various bioproducts developed in the centre. We can conduct tensile testing for rigid materials and for film materials. We can do flexural test. We have different load cells which enables to test for different types of materials. Furthermore environmental chamber helps to conduct tests at elevated temperature between -90 to 250 ?C.

Izod Impact Testing, TMI Machines

The impact strength, which is also called as impact resistance represents the ability of the material to resist physical breakdown when subjected to a rapidly increasing force. In principle, the impact machine records the total amount of energy necessary to deform and break a rectangular bar at high speeds. This is accepted as a comparison parameter for the toughness of materials. Detailed understanding of fracture and the other mechanical properties of polymeric materials is necessary for the polymer processing as well as finalizing the formulation. We frequently use to understand the performance of biopolymers and their composites.

Gas Chromatography: Shimadzu GC-2014 with flame ionization detector

Ultra Violet Visible Spectrophotometer, Cary-300 Bio

Our lab is equipped with UV-Visible spectrophotometer from Varian (Carry 300). The Cary 300 is run with Cary WinUV software, which is easy to use. The instrument has basic liquid sample holders and can be fitted with a wide range of accessories. UV/Vis spectroscopy is commonly used for the analysis of metal nanoparticles based on the plasmoic vibrations as well as highly conjugated organic compounds. This equipment is a very good tool to understand as well as monitor the reaction mechanism of metal nanoparticles formation.

Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer, Thermo-Scientific Nicolet 6700

Infrared Spectroscopy is very powerful tool to characterize the monomers, polymers, additives and the natural fibers. It is used to identify the chemical compounds based on the vibration of the certain bonds at specific wave numbers which are in the infrared range. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) is the mathematical interpretation of the infrared spectroscopy to computer systems. The polymerization, change in the chemical structure of polymers due to different effects such as degradation, thermal processing can be easily characterized with FTIR. Different natural fibers with different cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin can be analyze with FTIR and furthermore different lignin types are characterized using this equipment.

Gel Permeation Chromatography, Viscotek GPC max VE2001 GPC solvent/sample module

Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) is a separation technique based on hydrodynamic volume (size in solution). Molecules are separated from one another based on differences in molecular size. This technique is often used for polymer molecular weight determination. GPC is performed in organic mobile phases and is used mostly for synthetic polymers. GPC is the most commonly used method for polymer molecular weight and polydispersity index.

The Viscotek Model 3580 Differential Refractive Index (RI) Detector (Figure 25) is regarded as the universal detector in Gel Permeation/Size Exclusion Chromatography (GPC/SEC).  It is typically employed in conventional calibration with a set of standards to provide relative molecular weight and polydispersity.

Biodegradation Setup, 12 simulated compost units

Biodegradation respirometric studies
New material derived from combination of different biopolymers and natural fiber is expected to be biodegradable. However compostability potential needs to be established and evaluation need to be performed to testify the scientific claim. Set of twelve respirometric based biodegradation equipments was designed, assembled and verified for studying the degree of biodegradability.
As shown in the schematic (Figure 26), each study set-up included the following components:

1. A compost vessel of 2 liter capacity
2. A temperature maintaining device for the vessel
3. Compressed air and distribution system
4. CO2 scrubbing system from compressed air source
5.  CO2 capturing from the compost system

Analytical set-up to quantify captured CO2 from the compost

TMI High Precision Densimeter

TMI high precision densimeter measures density of polymer and solid materials. It can measure Specific Gravity resolution to 0.001. Scale capacity 300 grams (Specimen Range 0.5 - 300 grams). It has touch button display panel for easy operation. Also, it includes tweezers, thermometer, windshield, steel angle cage and container. And it includes RS232 interface output. It meets the following industrial standards: For Rubber: ASTM D297, JIS K6268A, old JIS K6350. For Plastic: ASTM D792, JIS K7112. This instrument has accessory for measuring liquid density kit.