Devolatilizer design

A twin-screw extmder is used to reduce residual monomers from ca 50 to 0.6%, at 170°C and 3 kPa with a residence time of 2 min (94). In another design, a heated casing encloses the vented devolatilization chamber, which encloses a rotating shaft with specially designed blades (99,100). These continuously regenerate a large surface area to faciUtate the efficient vaporization of monomers. The devolatilization equipment used for the production of polystyrene and ABS is generally suitable for SAN production. 

To summarize, the kinetics of the silanization reaction are strongly influenced by the efficiency of the devolatilization process. The degree of devolatilization mainly depends on processing conditions (e.g., rotor speed and fill factor), mixer design (e.g., number of rotor flights, size of the mixer), and material characteristics. The diffusion coefficient of the volatile component in the polymeric matrix is of minor influence. 

Single-screw and double-screw extruders are normally used for polymer melts to accomplish the deaeration or devolatilization of residual volatiles. Devolatilization in an extruder is effected through formation of the venting zone inside the chamber by carefully designed upstream and downstream screw sections. 

Many techniques have also been developed to improve devolatilization efficiency, including steam stripping [114], second fluid-assisted devolatilization [115], supercritical fluid devolatilization [116], and a variety of specially designed... 

The continuous mass process is divided into 4 steps rubber solution in styrene monomer, polymerization, devolatilization and compounding. In 1970 N. Platzer (40) drew up a survey of the state of the art. Polymerization is divided into prepolymerization and main polymerization for both steps reactor designs other than the tower reactors shown in Figure 2 have been proposed. Main polymerization is taken to a conversion of 75 to 85% residual monomer and any solvent are separated under vacuum. The copolymer then passes to granulating equipment, frequently through one or more intermediate extruders in which colorant and other auxiliaries are added. 

The engineering analysis and design of these operations addresses questions which are different than those addressed in connection with the shaping operations. This is illustrated in Fig. 1 which is a flow sheet, cited by Nichols and Kheradi (1982), for the continuous conversion of latex in the manufacture of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS). In this process three of the nonshaping operations are shown (1) a chemical reaction (coagulation) (2) a liquid-liquid extraction operation which involves a molten polymer and water and (3) a vapor-liquid stripping operation which involves the removal of a volatile component from the molten polymer. The analysis and design around the devolatilization section, for example, would deal with such questions as how the exit concentration of... 

Large diameter, melt-fed extruders are commonly used for the final devolatilization and pelletization of LDPE and PE copolymers in resin manufacturing plants. A full description of this type of extruder and process is provided in Section 15.3. Simulation of these processes is complicated by the multiple flights used in the design and the high H/W aspect ratios of the channels. The processes can be simulated from the feed hopper to discharge, however, since they are not required to convey solids and melt resin. This section will show the requirements and difficulties for simulating these processes. 

For reactor design calculations it is necessary to know the total devolatilization rate as well as the species production rates. Therefore, one needs to include in the reactor model all the reaction rates that are available for the devolatilization of the particular coal. Kayihan and Reklaitis (8) show that the kinetic data provided by Howard, et al. (5,6) can be easily incorporated in the design calculations for fluidized beds where the coal residence times are long. However, if the residence time of pulverized coal in the reactor is short as it is in entrained bed reactors, then the handling of ordinary differential equations arising from the reaction kinetics require excessive machine computation time. This is due to the stiffness of the differential equations. It is found that the model equations cannot be solved... 

As shown before the total number of differential equations is K(N +1). In this study, K = 10 and N = 15. The choice of 10 is considered to be a reasonable number for the characterization of particle size fractions for design calculations. Therefore, the number of differential equations, 160, was not artificially reduced by taking only a few discrete cuts. However, the possibility of representing the particle behavior with one average size was explored. Different averages like mean surface, surface mean, volume mean, etc., were tried but, none proved to be applicable for this problem where heat transfer and devolatilization occur simultaneously. 

The GPPS and HIPS reactor sections each contain several polymerization reactors in series, two-stage devolatilization and a pelletizing line. The devolatilization equipment is designed to deliver polystyrene product with a concentration of residual total volatile material (TVM) of less than 100 wt-ppm. Common equipment includes sections for feed preparation, SM recovery, water removal and bulk-resin handling. 

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