Numerical modeling of polystyrene synthesis in coiled flow inverter |
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Authors: | Monisha Mridha Mandal Christophe Serra Yannick Hoarau K D P Nigam |
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Affiliation: | (1) Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, 110016, India;(2) Laboratoire d’Ing?nierie des Polym?res pour les Hautes Technologies (LIPHT) – EAC 7165, Ecole de Chimie Polym?res et Mat?riaux (ECPM), Universit? de Strasbourg (UDS), 25 rue Becquerel, 67087 Strasbourg Cedex 2, France;(3) Institut de M?canique des Fluides et des Solides de Strasbourg (IMFS), UDS – CNRS, 2 rue Boussingault, 67000 Strasbourg, France; |
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Abstract: | Recent studies show that microfluidic devices are gaining importance as micromixer in chemical and bio-chemical analysis systems.
However, little attention has been paid to investigate chemical reactions such as polymerization reaction process in microreactors.
In the present study, numerical modeling of the free-radical polymerization of styrene was carried out in novel coiled flow
inverter (CFI) microreactor. The concept of CFI is based on the technique developed by Saxena and Nigam (AlChE J 30:363–368,
1984). This device is made up of helical coiled tube which is bent periodically to 90° at equidistant length. The CFD modeling
for polymerization reaction taking place in coiled tube reactor was also performed in order to understand the influence of
secondary flows on reactor performance for fluid flowing with very low flow rate. Its performance was compared with CFD results
obtained in a straight tube reactor having identical length and operating under the same process conditions. The results showed
that monomer conversion in the coiled tube reactor was higher than that of the straight tube reactor. Further work was carried
out in the novel CFI reactor to study the effect of diffusion coefficient and number of bends on different parameters such
as monomer conversion, number-average degree of polymerization (DP
n
), and polydispersity indexes (PDI). It was found that the performance of CFI as reactor increased when the diffusion coefficients
of reactants was decreased. Thus, CFI was found to be an efficient microfluidic device for controlling the free-radical polymerization. |
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