Isothermal batch reactors styrene polymerization

In this work, a comprehensive kinetic model, suitable for simulation of inilticomponent aiulsion polymerization reactors, is presented A well-mixed, isothermal, batch reactor is considered with illustrative purposes. Typical model outputs are PSD, monomer conversion, multivariate distritution of the i lymer particles in terms of numtoer and type of contained active Chains, and pwlymer ccmposition. Model predictions are compared with experimental data for the ternary system acrylonitrile-styrene-methyl methacrylate. 

Example 9.1 For the homogeneous polymerization of pure styrene with azobisisobutyr-onitrile at 60 °C in an isothermal, batch reactor,... 

Peaking and Non-isothermal Polymerizations. Biesenberger a (3) have studied the theory of "thermal ignition" applied to chain addition polymerization and worked out computational and experimental cases for batch styrene polymerization with various catalysts. They define thermal ignition as the condition where the reaction temperature increases rapidly with time and the rate of increase in temperature also increases with time (concave upward curve). Their theory, computations, and experiments were for well stirred batch reactors with constant heat transfer coefficients. Their work is of interest for understanding the boundaries of stability for abnormal situations like catalyst mischarge or control malfunctions. In practice, however, the criterion for stability in low conversion... 

Emulsion Polymerization in a CSTR. Emulsion polymerization is usually carried out isothermally in batch or continuous stirred tank reactors. Temperature control is much easier than for bulk or solution polymerization because the small (. 5 Jim) polymer particles, which are the locus of reaction, are suspended in a continuous aqueous medium as shown in Figure 5. This complex, multiphase reactor also shows multiple steady states under isothermal conditions. Gerrens and coworkers at BASF seem to be the first to report these phenomena both computationally and experimentally. Figure 6 (taken from ref. (253)) plots the autocatalytic behavior of the reaction rate for styrene polymerization vs. monomer conversion in the reactor. The intersection... 

---