This contribution describes the development of a continuous emulsion copolymerization processs for vinyl acetate and n-butyl acrylate in a tubular reactor. Special features of this reactor include the use of oscillatory (pulsed) flow and internals (sieve plates) to prevent polymer fouling and promote good radial mixing, along with a controlled amount of axial mixing. The copolymer system studied (vinyl acetate and butyl acrylate) is strongly prone to composition drift due to very different reactivity ratios. An axially dispersed plug flow model, based on classical free radical copolymerization kinetics, was developed for this process and used successfully to optimize the lateral feeding profile to reduce compositional drift. An energy balance was included in the model equations to predict the effect of temperature variations on the process. The model predictions were validated with experimental data for monomer conversion, copolymer composition, average particle size, and temperature measured along the reactor length.

Summary: In this work, vinyl acetate/butyl acrylate emulsion copolymerizations carried out in a continuous tubular reactor (pulsed sieve plate column, PSPC) were compared to those conducted in a semibatch stirred tank reactor under similar operational conditions. In order to minimize the compositional drift along the PSPC, reactions were carried out with different numbers (2, 3 and 4) of lateral feed streams of the more reactive monomer (butyl acrylate). For comparison, fed batch reactions were conducted with the same number of intermittent shot additions of butyl acrylate, at the corresponding batch times. Both systems (tubular and semibatch) with distributed feeding of more reactive monomer are able to reduce composition drift thus providing more uniformity in copolymer composition. In addition, the tubular reactor presents much better control of temperature than the tank reactor, which is important to achieve higher productivity.