Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the method decreasing debinding time as well as lowering operation condition than pure supercritical CO_2 debinding by using cosolvent or binary mixture of propane + CO_2. First method is to add cosolvent, such as n-hexane, DCM, methanol, 1-butanol, in supercritical CO_2. In case of adding cosolvent, we were found the addition of non-polar cosolvent (n-hexane) improves dramatically the binder removal rate (more than 2 times) compared with pure supercritical CO_2 debinding, second method is to use mixture of supercritical propane + CO_2, as solvent. In case of using mixture of supercritical propane + CO_2, the rate of debinding speeded up with increasing of pressure and concentration of propane at 348.15 K. It was found that addition of cosolvent (e.g., n-hexane, DCM) and binary mixture propane + CO_2 for supercritical solvent remarkably improved binder removal rate for the paraffin wax-based binder system, in comparison with using pure supercritical CO_2.

• Keywords: Metal injection molding;Debinding;Supercritical CO_2;Cosolvent;Propane;Diffusivity;