Today is the third day of our research shadowing at the second lab! We were taught how to use the extruder. It requires almost one hour to heat the extruder up.

The extruder consists of 6 sections as show by the 6 different temperatures in the picture. The polymer is passed through it to mix with some clay before it is cooled by passing through water and then chopped up into tiny pieces by the cutter!

We also learned how to make a modified clay mixture by diluting the original clay mixture before adding it with a hydrophobic solvent. All these mixtures have to be heated if not a suspension will be formed.

We were told that this method of making a modified clay mixture is the easiest and most basic method available. Thats all for today, can't wait to see what's lined up for us for our final day at the lab tmr!

Day 7

Today we prepared polymers, polystyrene to be exact. 

Polystyrene to be prepared from Styrene (smelly!)

As you can see from above, this styrene is stabilised because it is unstable. In order for us to make polystyrene, we need to remove the stabiliser first.

Then, deionised water is added to styrene (2 layers!) 

Then, potassium persulfate as an initiator is added. 

It is then heated to 75 degrees celsius for 24h.

Looking forward to go back tomorrow to check on our polystyrene!

Day 6

It's a brand new week! How exciting! In the morning, we gathered back at MSE e-learning studio to meet our mentors. This week, we will be learning about nanomaterials.

These are polymers, some of which include polypropylene (PP) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE).

This is a twin screw extruder.

We discovered that there are bottom-up electrospinning and top-down electrospinning. What we did last week was top-down electrospinning. Today, we saw a bottom-up electrospinning process.

We also saw a UL94 flame chamber which is used to test the flammability of plastic materials for parts in devices and appliances.

UL94 air chamber

This is a Haake Rheomix. Haake is actually the name of the brand, and not the actual name of this mixer.