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Mixing Effects in Continuous Free‐Radical Solution Copolymerization Tank Reactors: II—Investigation of Micromixing Effects
Author(s) -
Oechsler Bruno F.,
Poblete Israel B. S.,
Melo Príamo A.,
Pinto José C.
Publication year - 2019
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.201900018
Subject(s) - micromixing , copolymer , mixing (physics) , polymerization , chemistry , materials science , radical polymerization , chemical engineering , organic chemistry , polymer , analytical chemistry (journal) , physics , quantum mechanics , engineering
The effect of micromixing on the dynamic behavior of continuous solution copolymerization tank reactors is evaluated both experimentally and theoretically. For this purpose, copolymerization reactions of styrene and divinylbenzene are carried out in a lab‐scale polymerization system, composed of two tank reactors in series, to provide experimental data of conversion and molar masses for analysis of micromixing effects. Besides, a detailed micromixing model, based on a dynamic population balance approach, is developed and solved with the method of characteristics, to investigate the micromixing effects on the dynamic behavior of conversion and molar masses in copolymerization reactions. Particularly, results show for the first time that micromixing effects can be important to explain the dynamic behavior of polymerization reactions performed in bulk, but are not sufficient to explain the whole set of available experimental data, which are much more sensitive to modification of residence time distributions and macromixing.