In Silico Study of Polymer Sheet Drying Process

Abstract

In the last decades polymer sheets have been developed and used for various purposes, for example with electronic devices or solar cells. After polymer processing, they present a high residue of polymer solvent that should be reduced. Indeed, a high presence of solvent could affect their electrical properties or cause high levels of pollution. In addition, uncontrolled drying process can cause bubble formation with consequent film breakage. The aim of this work is to simplify the phenomena involved in the drying process in order to develop a mathematical model able to predict the time evolution of the composition and the mass of the polymer sheet. The model proposed here, therefore, is aimed at stimulating the industrial process and the results were verified against experimental data collected with cellulose acetate-based polymeric sheets. In addition, thanks to its simplicity and to the very low system requirements and central processing unit (CPU) time, our model gives immediate views of the system behavior.