Binary Supercritical Fluid Mixture Debinding in Metal Injection Molded Part

In recent years, the study of supercritical CO2 that can be used as solvent which extracts paraffin wax in metal injection molding process is going on. In this work, we used binary mixture of CO2 and propane in supercritical conditions in order to use a special property of propane that has strong solubility for nonpolar organic material. Debinding experiments were performed by varying weight ratio of propane at constant temperature(348.15 K) and various pressure (15-25 MPa). The binder removal rates at each condition were compared. Moreover, kinetics of debinding was studied by applying the Fick's diffusion model. The calculated debinding rate showed good agreement with experimental data. By using this model, we could evaluate diffusivity of paraffin wax.