Marketable mini-reactor for condensation polymers development and chemical processes optimisation.

Profil Titel	Marketable mini-reactor for condensation polymers development and chemical processes optimisation.
Referenz	06 ES SEOT 0G3T
Herkunftsland	Spain
Kooperationsart	Angebot
Eintrag/Änderung	2006-09-07 / 2010-02-19
Status	Dieses Profil ist abgelaufen! Falls Sie denoch Interesse haben, kontaktieren Sie uns. (2011-02-19)

Kurzfassung

A Spanish University offers a mini-reactor for product development & process improvement on policondensation reactions. Its main advantage lies in its small volume which makes it a versatile & marketable tool for manufacture or research of polyesters, polyamides or polycarbonates. The reactor is provided with advanced temp & vacuum control systems which guarantees high repeatability and confidence on the results. The University seeks tech.co-operation/commercial agreements with Tech. assistance.

Details

The mini-reactor consists on a tubular glass reactor fitted to a stainless steel header by means of a special Teflon ring closure. The header contains several ports: one is for the stirring system and another is for a nitrogen purge which acts as an inerting head-space. At the same time, nitrogen is used for vacuum regulation inside the reactor. A third port is used for the connection to the vacuum system and at the same time for evacuating the low molecular gaseous by-products typical for this type of reactions. In order to avoid damages to the vacuum pump, a cold finger is placed in between the reactor and the vacuum pump.
The reactor is provided with a double temperature regulation. On one hand, reaction temperature is regulated by means of a J-type thermo probe which is attached to the glass wall using a high temperature adhesive tape. This thermo probe is connected to a PID controller with fuzzy logic algorithm specially tuned to avoid the overshoot in the reactor temperature. Temperature is also regulated at the pipe connecting the reactor header and the cold trap by a second PID controller. Finally, the desired vacuum is regulated by a pressure transmitter which commands the nitrogen flow through a solenoid valve while the pump is operating at full vacuum.
The reactor is provided with a special paddle for high viscosity mixtures. Also a nipple-ended tip is located at the bottom of the reactor in order to ease the emptying operation of the hot high viscous mixtures typical at the end of the experimental runs.

Innovative Aspects:
INNOVATIONS:
Though all of the components and the technologies involved in the mini-reactor are already known, the novelty is that any company offers the whole assembly as commercial equipment, due to its technical complexity.

ADVANTAGES:
•Its main advantage lies in its small volume which makes it a versatile tool for obtaining information while spending few amounts of monomers.
•This equipment also allows the exploration at a small scale of any potential modification of the manufacturing process directed towards both the product quality and the process capability in terms of cost reduction and process safety. Examples of product development studies could be kinetic studies (rate constant estimations), evaluation of alternate catalysts, evaluation of post-end cappers and quenchers, systematic analysis of operating window, etc.
•For product development studies the device permits quick production of new copolymers compositions or improvements in product quality such as colour or viscosity consistency.