Permeation of Toluene into (Polypropylene/Acrylonitrile-co-butadiene Rubber) immiscible blend

Abstract

This study examines the unsteady permeation process of a solvent through a mixture of two immiscible polymers with a complex dividing interface. The mathematical model consists of three nonlinear PDEs that incorporate the coupling arising between mass transport and the dynamic changes of the blend internal structure. In addition to the solvent mass fraction c, we choose, as additional state variables, the conformation tensor m to characterize the macromolecular chains while the embedded interface is described by a scalar Q and a traceless second-order tensor q respectively for the size and shape anisotropy of the area. We extend the Fick's first law by two new non-Fickian terms. Among the obtained results, we present the transient permeation mass flux profiles of toluene through PP/NBR blend system at different compositions and predict the corresponding time lag.

Keywords

• Non-Fickian
• permeation
• Interface
• conformation
• time lag.