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POLYMERIZATION REACTION MONITORING FOR PSA PRODUCTION USING AN ATR-FTIR PROBE

2003 Dahlquist Award Winner

Renata Jovanovic, Doctoral student, Department of Chemical Engineering, (jovanovi@genie.uottawa.ca) Marc A. Dubé, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, (dube@genie.uottawa.ca)

University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada

The utilization of Attenuated Total Reflectance – Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy for the characterization of pressure sensitive products is well established. Some recent advances in sensor technology have opened new application areas of ATR-FTIR spectrometry. One of them is monitoring of chemical reactions, which are of interest for pressure sensitive adhesive production. In this work, ATR-FTIR spectrometry was used for monitoring polymerizations of acrylic monomers. Initially, the ATR-FTIR probe was used for off-line monitoring of solution polymerizations. The obtained results were used to establish real-time in-situ monitoring strategies for more complex, heterogeneous systems such as emulsion or miniemulsion polymerizations. In all cases, the performance of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy was compared to traditional monitoring techniques (i.e. gravimetry, 1HNMR spectroscopy) and good agreement between the techniques was obtained. However, some limitations of this technique were also uncovered. Current results offer a basis for the development of ATR-FTIR spectroscopy as not only a monitoring tool, but also as a tool for process control.