Transfer of Emulsion Polymerization of Styrene and n‐Butyl Acrylate from Semi‐Batch to a Continuous Tubular Reactor

The transfer of a semi-batch emulsion copolymerization to a single feed continuous recipe is investigated herein. A single feed continuous tubular reactor is used in the presented study in accordance with the requirement of minimizing the number of dosing streams. The correlation between operating parameters and the product properties are experimentally presented for the semi-batch as well as for the single feed continuous tubular reactor. It is shown that the transfer from semi-batch to continuous smart-scale tubular reactor needs to be direct as opposed to via a batch reactor. The particle sizes and molecular masses obtained in the tubular reactor are similar to those of the semi-batch process. However, the adjustment of the polymer composition is challenging. Using monomer addition as a means to influence chemical composition is not applicable. Thus, in the tubular reactor the chemical composition of the resulting copolymer depends on the initial monomer composition and reaction temperature. Nevertheless, the mass transfer of the emulsion polymerization damps the copolymer composition distribution (CCD) drift for higher initial monomer contents compared to bulk polymerization. It is shown that transfer of a semi-batch product to a continuous recipe is possible in early stages of process development.