Emulsion polymerization of butyl acrylate: safe optimization using topological criteria

Fast and strongly exothermic emulsion polymerization processes are particularly difficult to be optimized from both safety and productivity point of view because of the occurrence of a number of side undesired reactions (e.g. propagation of tertiary radicals, chain transfer to monomer, backbiting, termination by disproportion etc.) and the triggering of boiling phenomena with consequent stable foams formation under atmospheric pressure. Therefore, it would be useful to develop a suitable combined theoretical and experimental procedure able to detect both the optimum process dosing time and initial reactor temperature. In this work, it is discussed how an extended version of the topological criterion theory, originally developed for isoperibolic semibatch reactors, can be used to safely optimize indirectly cooled isothermal semibatch reactor. Moreover, such a methodology is applied to a case-study represented by the synthesis of polybutyl acrylate through the radical emulsion polymerization of butyl acrylate.