NanoPAT’s partner, UPV, organised this year their annual meeting with the industries of their consortia “Industrial Liaison Program” on 7-8 September 2022 in San Sebastian, Spain. This program is very relevant as it allows further strength of the research of the Polymerization Processes Group (PPG) of UPV/POLYMAT in order to help the partners to achieve a better product performance through process engineering. The member companies do have an active role by influencing the research program.
Under the title “Inline monitoring of particle size in emulsion polymerization processes by Photon Density Wave (PDW) Spectroscopy”, Usue Aspiazu (UPV) gave an oral presentation in this 2022 edition of the Industrial Liaison Program, where she presented the initial trials to inline monitor particle size by PDW during the semibatch emulsion polymerization process for the production of polyacrylate polymer particles. These initial trials demonstrated the successful inline monitoring of the particle size in reactions containing up to 35 % of solids content and particle sizes up to 150 nm. It was also shown that PDW is a good technique to monitor aggregation or coagulation processes in the reactor. Finally, the challenges to monitor latexes with solids contents beyond 40 % with particle sizes above 300 nm, and to monitor new nucleations found with the actual PDW probe were also presented.
The meeting was well booked, with 25 member companies producing aqueous polymer dispersions.
