(567g) Synthesizing High Selectivity Bromobutyl Rubber By a Microreactor System

Synthesizing high selectivity bromobutyl
rubber by a microreactor system

Pei Xie, Kai Wang, Guangsheng Luo

The
State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering,
Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract

Bromobutyl
rubber (BIIR), an important synthetic rubber, not only maintains many desirable
characteristics of traditional butyl rubber (IIR), but also has faster
vulcanization rate. However, there still exists two critical
problems in the process of brominating IIR in n-hexane, that are  the
limited mixing condition in traditional reactors and the low selectivity of
target product due to the generation of HBr in the process. Herein, a microreactor
platform was developed to enhance the mixing situation. And to
remove HBr from the reaction system in time, a water assistant technology and
calcium stearate in-situ neutralization method were successfully implemented in
the microreactor system, which produced high quality BIIR with almost 100%
selectivity and less reduced molecule weight.