A New Phase-Equilibrium Model for Simulating Industrial Nylon-6 Production Trains

This paper presents a thermodynamically consistent model for the phase equilibrium of water/caprolactam/nylon-6 mixtures, based on the POLYNRTL (polymer nonrandom two-liquid) activity-coefficient model. Our model predicts phase equilibrium for any binary or ternary mixture containing water, ε-caprol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Industrial & engineering chemistry research 2003-08, Vol.42 (17), p.3900-3913
Main Authors: Seavey, Kevin C, Khare, Neeraj P, Liu, Y. A, Williams, Thomas N, Chen, Chau-Chyun
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:This paper presents a thermodynamically consistent model for the phase equilibrium of water/caprolactam/nylon-6 mixtures, based on the POLYNRTL (polymer nonrandom two-liquid) activity-coefficient model. Our model predicts phase equilibrium for any binary or ternary mixture containing water, ε-caprolactam, and nylon-6 at industrially relevant temperatures and pressures with an average error of 1%. This paper also demonstrates its application to simulate a melt train and a bubble-gas kettle train for industrial production of nylon-6. Prior literature makes simplifying assumptions about liquid-phase (molten polymer) activities of water and ε-caprolactam; these assumptions are shown to be unrealistic.
ISSN:0888-5885
1520-5045
DOI:10.1021/ie030112+