Manufacturing of specialty materials in supercritical fluid carbon dioxide

Abstract

Supercritical fluid carbon dioxide is used in an industrial manufacturing process, i.e. Ferro Corporation’s SCAMP process, to produce specialty materials such as powder coatings, new polymers, pigments, polymer additives, and a series of temperature sensitive bio materials. The process was verified, on several scales of laboratory equipment, pilot plants and commercial scale all utilizing Ferro’s unique reactor design equipped with proprietary components such as the agitator, mechanical seals, heating/cooling jacket, wall surface, flush valve, cyclonic atomization chamber and its control logic. The products often demonstrated superior dispersion properties and performed equally or better than elevated temperature produced materials. In some cases, the materials so produced possess unique properties, e.g. porosity, particle size distribution, loading, or uniformity, that allow them to be used in new, innovative applications.