Determination of the Optimal Condition for Styrene Emulsion Polymerization Using Taguchi Method

The optimal conditions of emulsion polymerization of styrene and the influence of pertinent parameters such as operating temperature, agitation speed, oil to water ratio, as well as the concentration of surfactant and initiator have been investigated simultaneously in a batch stirred tank reactor by using Taguchi method. In most industrial scale plants, more than one parameter controls the overall process. When several factors are suspected to have influence on the result, it is tempting to run a one-factor-at-a-time experiment, as it may appear to be simpler to perform, and in some cases the number of experiments may be smaller. But such experiments usually fail to test for all possible factor combinations and produce reliable results. What we need is experiments of limited size that allow us to test factors at more combination and make better prediction about factor behavior. Then Taguchi method could be applied for satisfying the latter. The results of experimental runs showed that the monomer conversion increases by increasing temperature, SDS and KPS concentration, but monomer conversion first increases by increasing the impeller speed and then decreases.

کلیدواژه ها:

Styrene ، Emulsion polymerization ، Oligomers ، Taguchi method ، Kinetic ، micelle