Cork particles, recovered as byproducts of the processing of this natural material, were oxypropylated under pressure and relatively high temperature in the presence of KOH as catalyst. Various parameters were explored in order to assess the most suitable conditions, which led to the almost complete conversion of the solid cork into a viscous polyol. This product was a mixture of oxypropylated cork macromolecules and propylene oxide oligomers, which were thoroughly characterized. The use of these polyols as macromonomers in the synthesis of polyurethane foams gave promising results, thus showing that it should be possible to exploit the residues of this important renewable resource to manufacture original materials.
The highly dynamic behavior of liquid−liquid dispersions in reaction and separation operations still defies accurate and experimentally validated modeling. This behavior is characterized by simultaneous dropsize and operating conditions dependent drop breakage and coalescence, which strongly influence both the hydrodynamics and the reaction yield and selectivity, or separation performance, of such systems. This dynamic character of the behavior is present and of critical importance even at steady state, and not just during the transient evolution toward it or during disturbances in the operating conditions. This work addresses the measurement (by a noninvasive technique) and the optimization of kinetic liquid drop interaction parameters, duly taking into account the full and real complexity of the behavior, which is shown to require the inclusion and quantification of drop coalescence frequencies, no matter how lean and strongly agitated the dispersion may be. The analysis in this paper is limited to batch perfectly agitated vessels with lean dispersions at steady state and uses carefully collected experimental drop size distribution data and a very precise (with 50 logarithmic drop volume classes, to ensure uniform precision of drop size assignment) and fast coupled numerical dynamic simulation and nonlinear optimization algorithm, to quantify the drop breakage and coalescence kinetic parameters of drop interaction models. Significant physical insight has been gained on the interdependence of two (one for breakage and the other for coalescence) of the parameters and on the values of the others, in addition to an excellent agreement of the predicted and experimental drop size distributions at steady state. Further, and as expected, the need to always fully account for interdrop coalescence (in addition to breakage), whatever the operating conditions, by contrast to oversimplified modeling approaches, has also been clearly demonstrated.
Liquid−liquid systems research increasingly concentrates on computer simulations. However,
the possibility of adequately testing complex theoretical models against experiments is hindered
by a lack of reliable reproducibility data for laboratory and pilot-plant measurements. This
strongly limits meaningful evaluation of the increasingly complex process and equipment models/algorithms that are being developed. In this work, experimental data are obtained in a pilot-scale Kühni column, and model parameters and simulated data are generated using a drop
population balance model and algorithm. The results can be summarized as follows: (i) As
measured by the magnitude of careful random error and corresponding confidence limits
estimates, the simulation results exhibit excellent agreement with experimental drop-size
distributions and fair conformity with measured dispersed-phase hold-ups. (ii) Both experimental
and simulated results show that interdrop coalescence is always present within a column
extractor, even at low dispersed-phase hold-ups, and thus cannot be neglected in any physically
realistic and accurate modeling.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.