title: Some practical aspects of designing a laboratory scale batch polymerization reactor without gas entrapment and interfaced with virtual instrumentation.
abstract: A 1-1 stainless steel (SS) reactor with a glass bottom has been designed with symmetrically placed internals so that gas entrapment is completely avoided during bulk polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA). This reactor is instrumented and controlled using virtual instrumentation. The power consumed by a constant-speed stirrer motor is measured as a function of time which, along with the temperature history, can be used to infer the state (monomer conversion xm and weight average molecular weight Mw) of the viscous reaction mass. This study highlights the importance of symmetry in the design of the reactor, proposes a novel reactor design, and discusses in detail the temperature control configuration that can help track any temperature history. Some preliminary results are reported for bulk polymerization of MMA and a correlation developed for the stirrer power, which can be used for soft sensing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208016, India.
authors.forename: Shrikant A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Bhat
authors.forename: Deoki N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Saraf
authors.forename: Sanjay
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.forename: Santosh K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Gupta
mesh_terms: D002617:Chemical Industry / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D003198:Computer Simulation; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005740:Gases / Q000737:chemistry; D008956:Models, Chemical; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011109:Polymethacrylic Acids / Q000138:chemical synthesis*; D014584:User-Computer Interface
chemical_list: D005740:Gases; D011109:Polymethacrylic Acids