Chemical Engineering October 2021 - 7

Expanding access to real-time monitoring technology for
polymer reactions
A
recently announced business collaboration
between Fluence Analytics (Houston; www.
fluenceanalytics.com) and Yokogawa
Corp.
(Tokyo, Japan; www.yokogawa.com) will significantly
expand the availability of the latest generation of
Fluence's technology for continuous, real-time monitoring
of polymerization processes.
Under the agreement, the two companies will accelerate
deployment of ACOMP (automatic continuous online monitoring
of polymerization reactions), a device that can allow
tighter control, improved product yield and reduced waste
in polymer manufacturing, according to the two companies.
" With polymer processes, handling the inherent variability
in feedstock, equipment and operators, as well as
the complexity of the molecules, is a difficult problem that
can lead to out-of-specification products, " says Fluence
CEO and co-founder Alex Reed. " This challenge has
been vexing to solve with modeling and laboratory testing,
which occurs with a time delay, so most of [the] time,
manufacturers just have to hope the recipe holds up. "
The ACOMP system (diagram) is designed to provide
real-time information on polymerization reactions to enable
adjustments to the process that will avoid out-of-specification
products. The commercial system has an extraction
system to continuously pull sample from the process,
and the ability to automatically dilute the samples. Sensors
for molecular weight, viscosity, residual monomers
and other properties feed data into proprietary analytics
software, which correlates the values from the detectors
to product specifications or macroscale properties of the
finished polymer. The system is integrated into an onboard
programmable logic controller (PLC) and PC, and can be
tied into a distributed control system (DCS) of the process
to allow real-time changes to process parameters.
" Newer polymer chemistries are increasingly complex, "
Reed comments, " so there is a real need for these
continuous measurements. "
The ACOMP system has been successfully proven in
the laboratory, in pilot plants, and in production scale, and
already has commercial customers. Fluence is currently
working to improve data analytics and further the industrialization
of the technology for hazardous areas. They are
poised to launch the latest generation of ACOMP in the
coming months.
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OCTOBER 2021
7
http://www.fluenceanalytics.com http://www.yokogawa.com http://adlinks.chemengonline.com/80074-03 http://www.CHEMSTATIONS.COM/VEGGIE9 http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering October 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering October 2021
