Principles of Operation
In the production of viscous polymeric materials, it is often desired to operate continuously in order to eliminate batch-to-batch variations and produce a consistent product at all times. There are many equipment techniques employed to achieve continuous reactor operations such as with the use of extruders, cascades to stirred tanks, scraped surface reactors, etc.

The typical process goals of a continuous polymerization reactor are that the reaction product be homogeneous with regard to molecular weight, degree of reaction achieved, viscosity, temperature, molecular weight distribution and other chemical and physical properties. For this to be achieved, all the material within the reactor must be well mixed and have the same residence time (plug flow).

A tubular reactor is a fundamentally simple continuous reactor where there are no moving parts other than pumps that deliver the reactants. Unfortunately, an empty tube is not suitable as a viscous material chemical tubular reactor. However, the addition of GX static mixing elements inside the tube provides the ideal conditions of radial mixing and near plug flow necessary to perform chemical polymerization reactions.

Radial Mixing:
In an empty tube, viscous material in laminar flow will exhibit no radial mixing (Figure #3-top) where material will exit the pipe in virtually the same position as where it was introduced into the pipe. Addition of GX mixing elements in the same tube will create a high degree of radial mixing (Figure #3-bottom).