Soluble Fraction, Ethylene Content and Intrinsic Viscosity Determination for Quality Control Laboratories of Polypropylene Plants.

Polymer Char’s CRYSTEX® QC is a fully-automated system for obtaining the soluble fraction in polypropylene and copolymers through the separation capability of TREF. Its approach stands as a modern alternative to the traditional wet chemistry method based on xylene solubility, which is known for being very time-consuming and for requiring constant manual handling of solvent at high temperature. CRYSTEX® QC is very simple to operate and overcomes all the difficulties related to the traditional method by automating the process entirely and reducing the time of analysis down to 2 hours including dissolution.

Accurate and precise quantification is achieved by means of an infrared detector (IR4), that also measures Ethylene Content for the whole sample, the soluble fraction, and the crystalline fraction. Intrinsic Viscosity is also measured for the whole sample and the soluble and insoluble fractions by means of a built-in dual capillary viscometer, without adding analysis time.

CRYSTEX® QC was designed to be installed in each production plant to monitor the process or the grade changes by analysing a significant amount of powder sample (up to 4 grams).