Modeling of Suspension Polymerizations in Continuous Oscillatory Baffled Reactors (COBR): Population Balance Model

In the present work, a distributed population balance model is developed to describe the particle size distributions in continuous oscillatory baffled reactors (COBR) during vinyl chloride suspension polymerization for the first time. The novelty with respect to Part I is the simultaneous consideration of a distributed population balance model and a detailed kinetic model of vinyl chloride suspension polymerization to describe the dynamics of droplets and particles at varying process conditions in a COBR. Moreover, classical breakage and coalescence rate expressions were implemented to represent the effects of suspension properties and power dissipation on droplet interactions. The Sauter mean diameter was chosen as comparative metric among the different simulations. The effect of key model parameters on the particle size distributions were investigated and it is shown that increasing the rate of power dissipation from 2100 to 3056 W m–3 causes a 9.47% decrease in the final Sauter mean diameters of particles and droplets proving that oscillation frequency and amplitude can be adjusted to control the final size distributions of the produced polymer. Finally, the consideration of a prepolymerization tank to design the inlet size distribution helps to obtain final products with diameters of the order of 150 μm.