On-line monitoring of all-acrylic emulsion polymerization reactors by Raman spectroscopy

Fourier Transform Raman spectroscopy was used as an on-line sensor in order to monitor high solids content (50 wt%) n-BA/MMA emulsion copolymerization reactions. Due to the similarity of the chemical structure of the monomers, no separate bands could be detected for each monomer, and therefore a multivariate calibration technique was required (Partial Least Squares Regression, PLSR). Using experimental data from several semi-batch reactions independent PLSR models were built for the solids content, cumulative copolymer composition and unreacted amounts of n-BA and MMA. Those models were experimentally validated by monitoring reactions not used for calibration. It is demonstrated that FT-Raman spectroscopy can be successfully applied to on-line monitor emulsion polymerization reactors. This technique also shows a high potential for process control purposes because independent information about several molecular properties can be obtained from a single apparatus.