Polymer Laboratories and Tulane University sign an agreement to commercialise systems for continuous monitoring and control of polymerisation reactions
Polymer Laboratories announces a what it says is a key collaboration in online polymerisation monitoring and control, designed to provide continuous, accurate characterisation of polymers in reactors during the polymerisation production process.
It has signed an agreement with Tulane University, New Orleans, USA, to license and commercialise Acomp - automatic continuous online monitoring of polymerisation reactions. Developed by Wayne Reed, a professor in the department of physics at Tulane, Acomp works on the principle of continuous withdrawal of polymer from a reactor which is mixed with solvent from a reservoir.
The continuous stream of liquid is rapidly diluted sufficiently so that physical and chemical measurements can be made on the stream in virtually real time.
The advantage of continuous online monitoring is immediate notification of a change of state within the reactor.
The Acomp system, as commercialised by Polymer Laboratories, is a reliable, robust system.
No special synchronisation with the detectors is required, nor detector flush cycles or baseline stabilisation between measurements.
Data is gathered continuously, which often allows the resolution of kinetics and other important reaction features that are simply missed when data collection is interrupted by long dead times.
Acomp can be predictive; using multiple detectors, continuous records can be manipulated by both arithmetic operations and derivative/integration operations to extract advanced characteristics of polymerisations such as weight average and viscosity average molecular weights (Mw and Mv) and rate and degree of conversion.
Ultimately, Acomp can provide online and real time control of the polymerisation process and the polymer properties.
Acomp systems are available from Polymer Laboratories under its PL-PMC series of systems for online polymerisation monitoring and control.
It complements Polymer Laboratories's high speed chromatographic technologies for polymer characterisation in creating a spectrum of solutions for process monitoring and control.
