Scale-up of emulsion polymerization reactors part I - development of a model framework

Abstract

A computational framework, consisting of a turbulent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation coupled to a multi-zonal population balance is used to efficiently simulate the scale-up of a semi-batch emulsion polymerization, specifically one where the mixing issues are confined over a short period of time. Fluent CFD software is used to generate flow fields inside a series of reactors of varying production scale; these flow fields are subsequently used to generate a multi-zonal grid. The effects of reactor scale and inhomogeneous mixing on the latex particle size distribution are simulated by running a detailed emulsion polymerization model on the multi-zonal grid. In this paper, the first of two parts, the interplay between the CFD simulation and the automatic zoning algorithm is presented in depth. A hybrid computational framework consisting of a turbulent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model coupled to multi-zonal population balance model has been developed to simulate the scale-up of an emulsion polymerization process. This paper, the first of two, explores the capabilities of the CFD simulation and the automatic zoning algorithm using simulation data at multiple process scales. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.