The highly-explosive styrene and ethylbenzene feedstocks had to be stored in a separate building in an explosion-proof certified operating space. ILS designed the feedstock storage and dosing modules to be fully explosion proof adhering fully to our clients stringent specs.

The reaction section had to operate with highly-viscous polymer. This required powerful stirring and ILS went one step further and incorporated torque sensors, which proved extremely valuable to the client as an on-line tool for judging product quality. The unit was fitted with a powerful, dynamic Lauda thermostat system which made possible execution of polymerization reactions within the tight temperature specs, which were demanded by our client.

Removal of viscous polymer melt without blockage required double-jacketed heated tubing and flanges. High-temperature gear-pumps were implemented in a dead-volume-free configuration on the bottom of the reactors to allow for polymer melt to be removed at the end of reaction and continuously fed to a high-temperature vacuum devolatizer where unconverted monomer could be removed to extremely low levels. The entire unit fit in a very small space as the client only had a small, exiting test cell for the unit. The process-control hardware and software was designed 100% in accordance with the clients site standards (Siemens/iFix).