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Densimetry for on‐line conversion monitoring in emulsion homo‐ and copolymerization
Author(s) -
Canegallo Stefano,
Storti Giuseppe,
Morbidelli Massimo,
Carrà Sergio
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.1993.070470603
Subject(s) - vinyl acetate , copolymer , methyl methacrylate , monomer , acrylonitrile , materials science , styrene , emulsion polymerization , conversion factor , polymerization , polymer chemistry , emulsion , polymer , chemical engineering , chemistry , organic chemistry , composite material , physics , quantum mechanics , engineering
The use of on‐line densimetry to monitor conversion in batch emulsion polymerization reactors are investigated. Some characteristics of the sampling circuit connecting the reactor to the densitometer, which allow one to obtain reliable on‐line estimations of monomer conversion in the whole range of conversion, are discussed in detail. Moreover, the amount of collected data provides a practically continuous monitoring of the system evolution in time, which allows one to estimate directly the rate of conversion as a function of time. The technique has been applied both to homopolymerization systems [i.e., styrene (STY) and methyl methacrylate (MMA)] as well as to copolymerization systems [i.e., STY–MMA, acrylonitrile (ACN)–MMA, vinyl acetate (VAC)–MMA]. In the latter case, the density measurements are combined with a reliable model which provides for polymer composition as a function of conversion, in order to obtain accurate measurements of monomers conversion. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.