Mathematical Modeling of a CSTR for the Production of High-Impact Polystyrene: Prediction of RTD through CFD

I.L. GAMBA; D.A. ESTENOZ; S. MÁRQUEZ DAMIÁN; N.M. NIGRO; M.A. STORTI

Los Cocos, Córdoba, Argentina

Congreso; ARCHIPOL 2009; 2009

PLAPIQUI, INTEMA, UNC, INTEC

High-Impact Polystyrene (HIPS) is a heterogeneous material produced by polymerizing styrene (St) in the presence of a rubber. Final product is composed by rubber particles dispersed in a matrix of free polystyrene (PS). The partciles are themselves heterogeneous and contain ocluded free PS. The industrial HIPS process involves 4 stages: Dissolution, Prepolymerization, Finishing, and Devolatilization. The Prepolymerization is carried out in a series of continuous stirred reactors and the Finishing stage is unstirred. During the prepolymerization stage the morphology is developed and specifically during the phase inversion period. In this stage the fluid-dynamic phenomena is vital since it affects the particle size and the final morphology of the material. In this work, the continuous prepolymerization reactor for the production of HIPS is modeled considering the fluid-dynamics and kinetic phenomena.  The model is based on a previous homogeneous model (Estenoz et al., 1996; Luciani et al.,2009) and includes the prediction of the fluid-dynamics (FD). To this effect, the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package, FLUENT 6.3 (FLUENT Inc., 2006) is used.