Conclusion

Although micro-compounders are increasingly used in research and development, mainly in the pharmaceutical industry, little is known about how they work, and so their use is sometimes far from optimal. In this article, we have tried to provide the user of these machines with tools for understanding and evaluating their performance. An essential point to remember is that, in recirculation mode, the mass introduced into the micro-compounder is an essential parameter. It conditions not only the filling, but also the flow rate, and therefore pressures, residence times, specific energy and so on. From a modeling point of view, quasi-analytical approaches are possible for the corotative configuration, giving access to reliable, predictive models. This is not the case for the counter-rotating configuration, where the more complex and insufficiently accessible geometry means that only a few parameters...