Nitrile Rubber Reactor Operation Troubleshooting with Principal Component Analysis

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is employed as a tool in order to demonstrate yet another application of the technique, and, most importantly, to show that results from the statistical multivariate technique do make physico-chemical sense. The operation of a typical emulsion copolymerization of acrylonitrile and butadiene (nitrile butadiene rubber, NBR) is used as an example of process troubleshooting. In more general terms, a statistical tool is used to aid process data analysis and process operation (recipe, product property) troubleshooting.

The goal is to produce consistent Mooney Viscosity (MV) among different batches. The observation is that varying induction times lead to Mooney Viscosity inconsistencies. Firstly, we show results from the application of PCA to process data. Secondly, we deal with an even more important (and often ignored) question by examining whether the trends indicated by PCA make process sense.     

Flow Injection/Sequential Injection Chromatography: A Review of Recent Developments in Low Pressure with High Performance Chemical Separation

This review focuses on the developments of the various parts of instrumentation and the operation of low to medium pressure flow injection and sequential injection chromatography (FIC and SIC) systems. The report and discussion include solution delivery system, separation column, flow cell and detector, mobile phase management, and online sample pretreatment. Applications of FIC and SIC and their differences as compared to HPLC are also presented.