Preparation of expandable polystyrene/acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene by multi-stage initiator dosing with the application of artificial neural networks

Abstract

By increasing usage of polymers, environmental problems for them increase. The polymers that after usage, contribute to these issues, their preparation process may generate wastage, that affects production. In the production of expandable polystyrene (EPS), several batches on batch were discharged due to disruption in suspension, and the presence of these wastages in the production place can cause problems. This study tries to introduce a new polymer with special features by mixing different percentages of this polymer (10, 20, 30) with ABS polymer. According to the fact that disarray can occur in 60, 63, 66, and 69% of the polymerization, the polymerization continued until those percentages and then mixed with ABS. Different tests (like: Elongation at break, yellow index, Modular melt flow, Impact test, and Vicat softening temperature) was performed for mixed polymer. The results show that in some materials the quality of the mixed polymer may decrease but it is still in an acceptable range. The Multi-Layer Perceptron method of Artificial Neural Networks has been used in order to simulate data that has not been tested.