Chemical Engineering February 2016 - 11

Polymer-reaction monitoring
T
here are many critical parameters that are important
to monitor and measure in industrial
polymer reactions, including molecular weight,
viscosity and residual monomer concentration.
Typically, polymer reactions are characterized offline and
intermittently in a quality-control laboratory, or via inferential
models and data simulation from spectroscopic
probes. Now, a new technology that allows for direct,
online, continuous monitoring of polymerization reactions
has been commercialized by Advanced Polymer
Monitoring Technologies, Inc. (APMT; New Orleans, La.;
www.apmtinc.com). APMT's product, called Automatic
Continuous Online Monitoring of Polymerization Reactions
(ACOMP), comes after 18 years of research at
Tulane University (New Orleans, La.; www.tulane.edu),
much of it funded by large chemical companies, says
APMT CEO, Alex Reed. Interest in the technology has
been diverse across many industry sectors, including
both producers of specialty and commodity polymers,
as well as natural products producers, explains Reed,
emphasizing that " the ability to make these types of
measurements on fundamental polymer properties online
and in near realtime allows manufacturers to more
efficiently control the process. "
The ACOMP technology employs a continuous sampling
and conditioning system that extracts a small
stream of polymer from the process. The sample is diluted
and sent to multiple analytical-grade detectors
for continuous, cross-correlated, non-chromatographic
measurements, which yield a complete picture of the
most important reaction characteristics at each point
in time. Data analysis and reporting functions are built
into ACOMP's software platform. The product has been
vetted on batch, semi-batch and continuous reactors in
both aqueous and organic solvents for a wide variety of
synthetic and biological polymers, says Reed.
APMT collaborated with various partner companies in
industrial instrumentation and automation to commercialize
ACOMP. The company is currently working to integrate
ACOMP data into predictive-control models to provide automatic
feedback-control software. The company is also
investigating the use of ACOMP for chromatography-free
online determination of molecular-weight distributions. To
accompany the industrial ACOMP model, APMT is developing
a version specific to research-and-development
(R&D) applications. The company also has a second product
involving high-throughput light scattering, currently in
growing use for monitoring the stability of biologic drug
formulations in the pharmaceutical industry, including potential
process analytical applications in that industry.
These CeO2 nano-rods store a
lot of O2 at low temperatures
A
utomobile catalytic converters contain ceriumbased
co-catalysts to enhance the overall effectiveness
of the converter by absorbing and
releasing oxygen to convert CO into CO2. Existing
emission control systems typically use CeO2-based
materials, such as solid solutions of ceria and zirconia,
which deliver good performance at high temperatures,
but their oxygen storage capacity (OSC) deteriorates at
temperatures below 300°C. To overcome this drawback,
researchers from the group of Naoki Asao at Tohoku University
(Sendai City, Japan; www.wpi-aimr.tohoku.ac.jp/
asao_labo) have developed a process to fabricate fine
nano-rods of CeO2 that have a high OSC at temperatures
below 200°C.
To make the nano-rods, a Ce-Al precursor is first " corroded "
by a selective leaching process, which uses an alkaline
solution under mild conditions to selectively leach
away the Al and oxidize the Ce, followed by rapid quenching.
The resulting CeO2 nano-rods have diameters of 5 to
7 nm and specific-surface areas of more than 200 m2/g.
They exhibit an OSC of 156 µmol O2/g at 200°C (81 µmol
O2/g at 100°C), which is five times greater than existing
nano-cube systems at 200°C.
The researchers are working to enhance the heat resistance
of the developed materials by optimizing the
composition, for example by adding functional elements
such as zirconium. In addition to enhancing emissioncontrol
systems of automobiles, Asao says the nanorods
could also find applications in catalysis, fuel cells,
ultraviolet blockers, solar cells and sensors.
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Chemical Engineering February 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering February 2016
