After succesfull small scale test in beaker, we want to scale-up the process of suspension polymerization of phenol-formaldehyde resin (droplets of novolac in water, stabilized with PVA and crosslinked with urotropine) to jacketed reactor. From your experience, which combination of impeller and reactor geometry is suitable to get uniform polymeric beads? Is it better to use flat bottom or round bottom vessel?
Hi Ludek,
It sounds good that you want to go for the scale-up of the process. Scale-up no doubt is a challenging process. The most challenging thing in scale-up is to maintain the same yield of the process at the larger scale, which is often not so easy. I think it would be better to go with the flat bottom vessel. As far as the impeller is concerned, you may go with Rushton or pitched blade depending upon how much will be the viscosity of the mixture that you will treat inside the reactor.
Regards,
Sohail
On my experience with emulsion polimerization I found that, the more turbulence you have in the reactor, the better homogeneous emulsion you will get. It was easy in the lab with round bottom vessel but when I scale-up to a 8 ton cilindrical reactor with flat bottom and very slow rpm of the impeler, the result was a disaster.
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