Synthesizing high selectivity bromobutyl rubber by a microreactor system
Pei Xie, Kai Wang, Guangsheng Luo
The State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract
Bromobutyl rubber (BIIR), an important synthetic rubber, not only maintains many desirable characteristics of traditional butyl rubber (IIR), but also has faster vulcanization rate. However, there still exists two critical problems in the process of brominating IIR in n-hexane, that are the limited mixing condition in traditional reactors and the low selectivity of target product due to the generation of HBr in the process. Herein, a microreactor platform was developed to enhance the mixing situation. And to remove HBr from the reaction system in time, a water assistant technology and calcium stearate in-situ neutralization method were successfully implemented in the microreactor system, which produced high quality BIIR with almost 100% selectivity and less reduced molecule weight.
See more of this Group/Topical: Process Development Division