Development of an online optical prototype for the simultaneous analysis of defects or gels in industrially synthesized polypropylene films. Part 1: Comparison with ASTM D 3351–93 methods

Polypropylene (PP) films are crucial in various industrial applications, from packaging to medical prod ucts. However, a common challenge in PP manufacturing is the presence of gel-like defects. These gels are minor defects on the surface of the films that significantly affect the physicochemical, m...

Full description

Autores:
Hernandez Fernandez, Joaquin
Ortiz, Katherine
Lopez-Martinez, Juan
Tipo de recurso:
Fecha de publicación:
2024
Institución:
Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar
Repositorio:
Repositorio Institucional UTB
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repositorio.utb.edu.co:20.500.12585/12671
Acceso en línea:
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12585/12671
Palabra clave:
Gels
Polypropylene films
LEMB
Rights
openAccess
License
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
Description
Summary:Polypropylene (PP) films are crucial in various industrial applications, from packaging to medical prod ucts. However, a common challenge in PP manufacturing is the presence of gel-like defects. These gels are minor defects on the surface of the films that significantly affect the physicochemical, mechani cal, and organoleptic properties of the films, compromising the quality of the final product. This first research focuses on developing and validating an in-line optical method to replace the international method ASTM D 3351–93. The main objective was to create a methodology that has the same scope and analytical performance as those reported by ASTM D 3351–93 in such a way that it can compete with it in terms of precision and accuracy, thus allowing end users to this ASTM, such as PP producers, PP marketers, PP film producers, among others internationally, can use this new methodology with necessary analytical support. This analytical methodology integrates the PP extrusion zones, the film processing stages, and the optical zone for reading and processing analytical data. Additionally, it has the advantage of working with a sample size that is even more representative of the population and has less human error since only one operator is required to carry out the test; this method also has much shorter response times. The developed prototype had 14 online stages that allowed represen tative quantities of samples to be taken and processed thermally and mechanically for ideal optical measurement. For the online method, a 6-point calibration curve is carried out at concentrations of 40, 10, 5, 2, 1 and 0 ppm for the gel or defect sizes of 200, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800 and 900 μm, show ing excellent linearity where the correlation coefficient varied between 0.997 and 0.999, the limits of detection (LOD) varied between 0.85 and 2.61 and the limits of quantification (LOQ) ranged between 2.82 and 8.71. The statistical analyzes by ANOVA of the comparison between the ASTM D 3351–93 method and the proposed simultaneous method indicate that the p value of the evaluation of the means was 0.946, which suggests that the means are not statistically different. To complement, the Tukey test was carried out at 95 %, indicating that the methods have statistical equivalence.