(429a) Modeling and Reaction Kinetics of Reactors for Polyesters Production

Scale-up of polymerization processes for the production of co-polyesters is complicated by the wide range of raw material units that can be used. For this reason, the knowledge of kinetics, mass transfer and thermodynamic characteristics of the reaction medium are important for the design of new polymers.

In this paper, an approach for the determination of reaction kinetics at the laboratory scale will be presented. The results will then be used in the reactor models for the scale-up of new polymer recipes to the commercial scale reactor.

A comparison of the modeling and experimental data at different scales will be finally presented.