Facilities & equipment

The  strength of the Group’s research is supported by  extensive and modern in-house facilities for polymer processing, testing, characterisation and for wet chemistry.

Polymer processing Laboratory

Processing facilities include single and co-rotating twin screw (33:1 and 24:1) extruder lines, internal mixers (Haake and Brabender), blow moulding and injection moulding machines, compression moulding presses.

Accelerated Weathering,  Ageing and  Polymer Testing Laboratory

Accelerated ageing and weathering devices include  Atlas Ci 4000 weatherometer, SEPAP 12/24 and sunlamp-blacklamp photoageing cabinets, single cell air-circulating thermal ageing ovens (Wallace), twin-bore capillary rheometer, melt flow index instruments, tensile testing, vacuum ovens,  Soxhlet extractors.

Characterisation Facilities

A comprehensive range of spectroscopic, thermo-mechanical and chromatographic instrumentations including  Uv-vis,  fluorescence, NIR and mid FTIRs, FTIR-microscopy, ATR, Raman, TG, DSC, Hyper-DSC and high pressure DSC, DMA, HPLC  (analytical and semi-preparative), access to multinuclear FT-NMR for solution and solid studies, SEM, GC-MS, Maldi-Tof-MS.

Wet  Chemistry Laboratory

A fully equipped chemistry  laboratory for conducting basic and applied research in organic, analytical and physical chemistry underpinning the polymer research activity of the Group.