Elucent CNC forced film drying characterisation
Project challenges
The creation of high-quality pigments from renewable CNC materials is extremely challenging, with limited established knowledge of accelerated drying characteristics or of process parameter controls and effect.
Business challenge
Process Innovation
Sustainability & Net Zero
Sector
Manufacturing
Technology or capability
Industrial Transformation
Process Design
The Challenge
The creation of high-quality pigments from renewable CNC materials is extremely challenging, with limited established knowledge of accelerated drying characteristics or of process parameter controls and effect. Compatible drying technologies, substrate choices, spreading methodologies, temperature ranges, drying times and energy requirements were unknown or unproven; typical commercially available pilot-scale drying solutions offering limited flexibility or are ill-suited for drying CNC given the understood properties of the material.
MTC's Solution
Through research was performed to compaore and evaluate potential drying technologies for compatibility and efficiency; additionally, wherever practical, initial viability and performance trials were performed to validate theoretical research findings. This research informed the specification, design and construction of a highly adaptable, custom drying rig facilitating reconfiguration to explore; alternate heating technologies, process parameter control and unrestricted observation and monitoring of the drying behaviour. Utilising this equipment, MTC performed an extensive set of experiments to determine base-line drying conditions and explore the effect of process condition changes, including research into higher performance substrate materials and additives. To facilitate quantifiable comparison of the resultant CNC films, several analysis techniques were developed and evaluated for efficacy, consistency and applicability.
The research and custom apparatus developed by MTC has enabled us to explore a wide range of process influences in an agile environment, quickly and with reduced costs; this has provided valuable insight into the drying behaviour of the CNC material which can be leveraged to scale production of our novel pigments with a reduced time-to-market.
Tianheng Zhao – Head of R&D, Sparxell Ltd
The Outcome
The MTC research team were able to establish baseline drying parameters for the successful drying of viable quality CNC films at pilot-scale. The effects of several process parameters were explored to understand their impact on film quality, colour purity, reflected intensity and process efficiency. Improved performance substrates were identified and validated with demonstrable benefits in CNC film quality, drying time and energy requirements. Successfully dried films were demonstrated to be achievable at temperatures exceeding 90ºC, reducing drying times from greater than 7 hours to less than 30 minutes.
Benefits to the Client
MTC have been able to provide Sparxell with quantifiable insights into the critical considerations and constraints for the specification of pilot and plant-scale drying solutions. It has been possible to explore the effects of process parameter changes over varying CNC formulations to achieve a lower cost and greatly reduced timeframes. Multiple drying technologies have been evaluated and the failure mode of several film defects have been identified and resolved. This has greatly reduced the financial risk and time-to-market for specifying and procuring pilot and large-scale production equipment.
