Polymerization Process Intensification Using Circulating Fluidized Bed and Rotating Fluidized Bed Systems

Abstract

Gas phase olefin polymerizations are now widely achieved in fluidized bed reactors. In fluidized bed reactors, small catalyst particles are introduced into the bed, and when exposed to the gas flow (monomer), polymerization occurs reaching to a typical polymer particle size of 1000–3000 μm diameter. In spite of the significant application of fluidized bed polymerization reactors, they have shown limited flexibility in achieving high gas throughput mainly because of the heat removal limitation. To decrease the very high temperature rise in fluidized bed polymerization reactors, two different process concepts and numerical simulation of those concept processes are discussed. This chapter investigates the feasibility of using circulating fluidized bed (CFB) and rotating fluidized bed (RFB) polymerization reactors for increasing the polymer production rate using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach.