FROM TRADITIONAL S-PVC TECHNOLOGY TO CONTINUOUS INITIATOR DOSING ON TO THE FUTURE: JOINTLY CRACKING THE DEVELOPMENT AND SCALE-UP NUT Brighton 2008 By Koen Vanduffel Akzo Nobel Deventer The Netherlands In cooperation with Vinnolit GmbH & Co. KG Ismaning Germany
Contents Introduction Current reaction control and initiation systems CiD the idea Breakthroughs needed Scale-up steps Commercial introduction Summary and acknowledgements
Introduction The everlasting drive to improve productivity and cost Past developments The development of the CiD technology
Current reaction control systems Dosing all ingredients at the start of the batch Jacket heat-up or hot water charging Temperature control trough the jacket, baffle and condenser cooling systems Disadvantage: the control system itself consumes some cooling capacity
Current initiation systems Reaction rate not constant Inefficient use of cooling capacity Many improved systems have been presented in the past during Brighton PVC conferences Significant cooling capacity remains unused
Continuous initiator dosing: the idea Continuous initiator dosing is known in many other polymers (acrylics, PE, ) PVC: few attempts have failed due to improper peroxide choice Akzo Nobel patent (1997): Half-life shorter than 1 hour Process works commercial use needs further breakthroughs
Temperature control system upside down Classical control system consumes some cooling capacity Second temperature control system regulating peroxide dosing Peculiar PVC reaction kinetics Start using the classical cooling control system Max cooling: switch to peroxide dosing control
Peroxide distribution Dogma: Dosing peroxide during the polymerization causes fish eyes Recent peroxide emulsion technology: Extremely low droplet size helps to avoid fish eyes
Thermal stability and automated handling and dosing Storage @ -20 ºC Lower temperatures are impractical Hydroperoxide addition: concentration increased safely to 26% Bulk transport, storage and handling Automated delivery system Storage in bulk tanks Completely automated dosing system
Scale-up 1 m 3 reactor Prove of concept obtained in Akzo Nobel laboratories Vinnolit Gendorf 1m 3 pilot plant Very smooth introduction Simple standard lab equipment
28 m 3 reactor CiD demonstration unit built Contains all the necessary equipment Handles all control and safety items Unit is built to run any commercial plant worldwide Temperature control more difficult Longer delay in temperature measurement Combination of temperature and pressure control
115 m 3 inner cooler reactor
115 m 3 inner cooler reactor
Commercial introduction 16 April 2007 00:00 [Source: ICB] Vinnolit boosts PVC Vinnolit will use Akzo Nobel's continuous initiator dosing (CID) technology for the production of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The first use will be at Vinnolit's Knapsack plant in Germany. Use of CID with Vinnolit's inner-cooler reactor design will improve PVC output, quality and operational safety, the company says.
Future developments Continuous PVC production: Patent filed Laboratory evaluation ongoing A cooperation for scale up needs to be set up
Summary CiD was developed by Akzo Nobel Jointly with Vinnolit CiD was scaled up Full scale commercial introduction in April 2007
Acknowledgements I would like to especially thank our project partners at Vinnolit for the open collaboration during the project next to my Akzo Nobel colleagues who spent so much of their time developing CID.