The Chair is strengthening its pilot plant with the purchase of a twin-screw extruder (Thermo Scientific Pharma 16 model), to develop its biomass pre-treatment and compound extraction capacities.
This highly versatile and adaptable equipment can process material at temperatures up to 400°C and over a wide pH range and is especially suited to reactive extrusion. This extruder, designed for R&D activities, has a screw diameter of 16 mm and a screw length of 40D+15D of filtration (total 0.88 m) allowing to work from exploratory scale in the laboratory to semi-industrial trials (from 0.1 to 5 kg/h of material flow). The equipment is also instrumented to obtain a maximum amount of data, which can be used for further modelling of the process.
 

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