Influence of mixing performance on polymerization of acrylamide in capillary microreactors

Abstract

Nonliving free radical polymerization of acrylamide was chosen as a model reaction to investigate the effect of mixing performance on the polymerization in capillary microreactors. The polymerization rate was enhanced by increasing the volumetric flow rate and the reaction temperature at a constant residence time. However, higher temperatures led to lower Mn and larger PDI. The reaction mixture viscosity increased significantly during the polymerization. Both diffusion and dispersion coefficients were calculated to evaluate the mixing performance in microreactors. The capillary microreactor with a larger inner diameter led to higher monomer conversions, lower Mn and larger PDI compared to the capillary microreactor with a smaller inner diameter, which could be explained through a heat balance analysis for the polymerization and the dispersion effect. Moreover, it was found that the addition of a pre‐mixing stage minimized the effect of insufficient mixing between the initiators and the monomers on the polymerization. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 64: 1828–1840, 2018