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Scale‐ U p of Emulsion Polymerization Reactors Part II – Simulations and Interpretations
Author(s) -
Pohn Jordan,
Cunningham Michael,
McKenna Timothy F. L.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
macromolecular reaction engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1862-8338
pISSN - 1862-832X
DOI - 10.1002/mren.201300011
Subject(s) - emulsion polymerization , computational fluid dynamics , mixing (physics) , scale (ratio) , turbulence , polymerization , emulsion , materials science , grid , flow (mathematics) , mechanics , physics , chemical engineering , engineering , mathematics , polymer , composite material , geometry , quantum mechanics
A computational framework, consisting of a turbulent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation coupled to a multi‐zonal population balance is used to efficiently simulate the scale‐up of a semi‐batch emulsion polymerization, specifically one where the mixing issues are confined over a short period of time. Fluent ™ CFD software is used to generate flow fields inside a series of reactors of varying production scale; these flow fields are subsequently used to generate a multi‐zonal grid. The effects of reactor scale and inhomogeneous mixing on the latex particle size distribution are simulated by running a detailed emulsion polymerization model on the multi‐zonal grid. In this paper, the second of two parts, the capabilities of the framework are demonstrated by simulating the scale‐up of a semi‐batch styrene emulsion polymerization.