Study of suspension polymerization of styrene with a circular loop reactor

Abstract

A circular loop reactor was devised and used to study the suspension polymerization of styrene. The transient droplet diameter distributions and the final particle size distributions were measured by changing the impeller diameter and the impeller speed. The effects of the impeller diameter on the size distributions and mean sizes of the final polymer particles were investigated. In the case of lower mixing power, the mean polymer droplet diameters depend upon impeller diameter in the early stage of polymerization, but become almost identical irrespective of the impeller diameter after the middle stage. In the case of higher mixing power, the mean polymer droplet diameters are almost identical irrespective of the impeller diameter throughout polymerization. The final mean particle sizes are correlated only with mixing power.