**Impact of Fluid Flow on Free Radical Polymerization in a Batch Reactor**

Gerardo M. Pineda-Torres, Cecilia Durán-Valencia, Fernando Barragán-Aroche and Simon López-Ramírez

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/64156

#### **Abstract**

In this work, the mixing process on a batch reactor is analyzed for the thermal synthesis of poly(acrylamide-co-sodium 2-acrylamide-2-methylpropane sulfonate) initiated by ammonium persulfate. The analysis is achieved by using tracer technology and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). ANSYS Fluent® software is used for numerical simulations. By studying the mixing time in the reactor, the injection point and the stirring speed are determined so that the kinetics of copolymerization is improved.

The kinetics of copolymerization is studied qualitatively based on the solution of the inverse rheokinetic problem. The progress of co-polymerization was registered with a Rheometer Anton Paar MCR 301®. The copolymers synthetized were characterized by capillary viscometry, infrared spectroscopy, calorimetry, and rheology.

**Keywords:** CFD, rheokinetics, rheology, batch reactor, polymerization
