Phenol-formaldehyde reaction identification

In this section, the phenol-formaldehyde reaction is introduced as a case study. This reaction has been chosen because of its kinetic complexity and its high exothermic-ity, which poses a strong challenge for modeling and control practice. The kinetic model presented here is adopted to simulate a realistic batch chemical process the identification, control, and diagnosis approaches developed in the next chapters are validated by resorting to this model. 

In this section, the phenol-formaldehyde reactive system is considered as an example of identification of reduced kinetic models. The kinetic model containing 13 components and 89 reactions, developed in Sect. 2.4 to study the production of 1,3,5-methylolphenol, is too detailed and complex for control and monitoring purposes. Thus, in this section this model is referred to as detailed model, while four reduced kinetic models, based on lumped components and reactions, are developed. 

The large group of plastics without heteroatoms can only be incompletely identified with this separation procedure. Place the sample in water. If it dissolves slowly, then it may be polyvinyl alcohol. (For specific identification, see Section 6.2.6.) If the plastic is insoluble in water, then check first for formaldehyde (Section 6.1.4). The only positive reaction in this group is given by phenol formaldehyde resins and polyoxymethylene (polyformaldehydes). 

Of course, derivatization methods can also be used for the identification of organic acids. For example, volatile fatty acids in urine and plant protein hydrolysates were esterified with phenyldiazomethane and the resulting benzyl esters were separated by glass capillary GC [254]. Janos et al. [255] described a method for the analysis of dimedone derivatives of formaldehyde and other aliphatic aldehydes on capillary columns. Phenolic amines, 3-methoxycatecholamines, indoleamines and related amines can be determined as their N,0-ethyloxycarbonyl derivatives [256]. The reaction of dithiols and certain monothiols with phenylarsine oxide was used for derivatization prior to GC [257]. Destructive GC methods for the identification of microorganisms were described in refs. 258-261. 

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