Basf Se Corporation

Sandra Jeck

Oliver Soetje

Gabriela Eugenia Fonseca Zepeda

John Scott Barratt

Faissal-Ali El-Toufaili

Dennis Loesch

Dirk Meckelnburg

Markus Ostermayr

Bjoern Langlotz

Shankara Narayanan Keelapandal Ramamoorthy

Pascal Hesse

Hazel Sprafke

Bernd Schube

Robert Haschick

Aleksandra Jelicic

Jelan Kuhn

Tobias Bringmann

John Barratt

A process for producing an aqueous polymer solution, including: (a) providing a hydrated polymer that has been prepared by aqueous solution polymerisation of ethylenically unsaturated monomers, which hydrated polymer contains at least 10% by weight active polymer; (b) cutting the hydrated polymer by subjecting the hydrated polymer to at least one cutting stage containing at least one stream of aqueous liquid at a pressure of at least 150 bar to reduce the size of the hydrated polymer; and (c) dissolving the hydrated polymer in an aqueous liquid so as to obtain an aqueous polymer solution. An apparatus for producing an aqueous polymer solution.

Process and apparatus for producing an aqueous polymer solution

A reverse-phase suspension polymerisation process for the manufacture of polymer beads comprising forming aqueous monomer beads of an aqueous solution comprising water-soluble ethylenically unsaturated monomer or monomer blend and polymerising the monomer or monomer blend to form polymer beads while suspended in a non-aqueous liquid, recovering polymer beads, and then cleaning the non-aqueous liquid in which the process comprises providing the non-aqueous liquid in a vessel (), forming a suspension of monomer beads from the aqueous monomer or monomer blend in the non-aqueous liquid, initiating polymerisation to form polymerising beads, removing a suspension of the polymer beads in non-aqueous liquid from the vessel and recovering, water soluble or water swellable polymer beads from the suspension, in which the non-aqueous liquid contains impurities which comprise particles, and then transferring the non-aqueous liquid from the suspension to a cleaning stage, in which the cleaning stage provides a cleaned non-aqueous liquid suitable for use in a reverse-phase suspension polymerisation process, which cleaning stage comprises removing particles from the non-aqueous liquid in at least one filtration step. The invention also relates to the apparatus suitable for carrying out a reverse-phase suspension polymerisation and polymer beads obtainable by the process or employing the apparatus. The invention further relates to a cleaned non-aqueous liquid obtainable by the process.

Reverse-phase polymerisation process

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Ludwigshafen, Germany

Sandra Jeck