Polymers

Today’s polymer industry is faced with the challenge of consistently producing specialty and high-performance polymers with high quality, while at the same time reducing the cost of making them.

Polymer processes are challenging because of the large change in material properties that takes place during polymerization. Moreover, every type of polymerization process has its own particular difficulties. For example,

• In bulk polymerization, efficient handling of high viscosity, high molecular weight polymer.
• In suspension or emulsion polymerization, formation of an efficient dispersion using agitation and emulsifiers.
• In condensation polymerization, providing high vacuum and good mass transfer for efficient removal of by-product such as water.
• In processes with agglomeration of polymerized particles, control of the particle morphology and size distribution.

A thorough understanding of the underlying characteristics of the polymerization can lead to a better polymerization process, and will positively impact your business in many ways.

Polymer Process Design and Analysis

CWB Tech has experience in debottlenecking, troubleshooting, as well as grassroots design of polymer processes. Our unique approach identifies key issues and phenomena which may result in limiting the process performance. We tackle these using properly selected tools from our technology repository, leading to a higher level of performance for your polymerization process.

We are also experienced in the modeling, analysis and design of reactor systems which are commonly used in polymer processes. These include:

• Stirred tank and loop reactors for slurry polymerization as for polypropelene and polyethylene (HDPE/ LLDPE).
• Fluidized bed reactors for gas phase olefins polymerizations.
• Fixed bed reactors for solid state polymerizations as for poly(butylene terephthalate), poly(ethylene terephthalate), and Nylon 6.
• Stirred tank reactors for suspension and emulsion polymerizations as for poly(vinyl chloride).
• Autoclaves and tubular reactors for bulk polymerizations like polystyrene, poly(methyl methacrylate), and polyethylene (LDPE).

CWB Tech offers the following services for the polymer industry:

• Process Development
  • Objective: To understand the underlying characteristics of the polymerization and to identify the key issues and phenomena which dominate the process performance.
  • Value Added: A well designed polymerization process with a higher level of performance.
• Reaction Engineering
  • Objective: To analyze the polymerization reaction system from a systems perspective starting from the experimental data all the way to the scale-up.
  • Value Added: An optimized reaction system with the best choice of reactor type, operating conditions and operating policies.

Learn more about our services. Please contact us to find out how to proceed with a particular project or process development problem.