Developing improved models and control strategies for production of solvent-borne acrylic resins used in automotive coatings

涂料行业是一个价值500多亿美元的全球行业，在环境和价格压力的推动下，该行业正在经历不断的技术变革。通过高温溶液聚合生产的丙烯酸树脂是许多汽车涂料的基础聚合物组分。该行业需要有效的方法来提高生产率，用现有的设备生产新的聚合物材料，并用对环境影响低的成本效益高的版本来修改或取代现有的工艺。实现这些目标所需的聚合动力学和机理方面的许多基础知识还很匮乏。我们的研究正在填补这一重大空白，通过应用专门的动力学技术来实现对这些聚合物是如何制造的更好的理解，并通过实施详细的数学模型，其中包括用于生产这些材料的高温合成条件下控制聚合速度和聚合物结构的重要辅助机制。杜邦是一家领先的汽车涂料生产商，在安大略省阿贾克斯设有主要工厂，在此基础上，我们与杜邦建立了成功的合作关系，将我们的工作扩展到包含功能单体的共聚系统。此外，我们开始了一项新的努力，利用我们的模型来改进半间歇反应器系统的优化和控制。除了使加拿大经济中重要的汽车和涂料行业受益外，这项研究还将提供对其他自由基聚合应用有用的基础知识，并将为两名研究生提供聚合物合成、表征和反应工程方面的专门培训。

The coatings industry is a 50+ billion dollar worldwide industry that, driven by environmental and price pressures, is undergoing a continual change in technology. Acrylic resins produced via high-temperature solution polymerization are the base polymer component for many automotive coatings. The industry requires efficient methodologies to increase production rates, to produce new polymeric materials with existing equipment, and to modify or replace existing processes with cost-effective versions that have low environmental impact. Much of the fundamental knowledge of polymerization kinetics and mechanisms required to achieve these goals is lacking. Our research is filling this significant gap through the application of specialized kinetic techniques to achieve an improved understanding of how these polymers are manufactured, and by implementing detailed mathematical models that include the important secondary mechanisms that control polymerization rate and polymer structure under high-temperature synthesis conditions used to produce these materials. Building on a successful relationship with DuPont, a leading automotive coatings producer with a major facility located in Ajax, Ontario, we extend our work to include copolymerization systems containing functional monomers. In addition, we start a new effort to utilize our models for improved optimization and control of the semibatch reactor system. In addition to benefiting the important automotive and coatings sectors in the Canadian economy, the study will provide fundamental knowledge useful to other radical polymerization applications, and will provide two graduate students with specialized training in polymer synthesis, characterization, and reaction engineering.