Understanding Differential Microemulsion Polymerization in Continuous Slug Flow Through Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulation

Microreactors have been universal in polymerization and will help mitigate the residence time distribution and viscosity if conducted in a slug flow regime. The numerical simulation of this practice remains uncharted. Herein, based on our previous study, we proposed a kinetic Monte Carlo algorithm to describe the differential microemulsion polymerization in a biphasic slug flow. Propelled by an automatically spaced refreshment method and other accelerating approaches, the performance of the algorithm was boosted by over forty times. The sensitivity to the model-fitting parameters was analyzed to help understand the underlying mechanisms. After a thorough investigation on the effects of miscellaneous operating conditions regulatable in the continuous slug flow regime, the feasibility of product customization was demonstrated with case studies. Bridging the studies upon kinetics of microemulsion polymerization and interphase mass transfer in microreactors, this work should be able to provide deeper understanding of the process and guide the actual operation.