Kinetic and microstructural study of the continuous emulsion polymerization of an all-acrylics formulation in the loop reactor

The suitability of a continuous loop reactor to produce all-acrylic low Tg latexes was investigated. The effect of the preemulsification level, temperature, average residence time, initiator concentration and surfactant concentration on both kinetics and polymer microstructure (gel content and molecular weight) was studied. It was shown that different polymer architectures could be obtained varying these operation variables, opening the possibility of fine tuning the polymer characteristics.