Study and evaluation of CO2 laser application in the epoxy resin production in microreactors

Epoxy resin study is of a great scientific and technologic interest due to the versatility showed for these materials. This versatility is the result of different chemical reactions involved and the physical-chemical characteristics of the several hardeners, catalysts, and reagents that make possible uncountable process and properties combination objectify specific applications. Epoxy resin from epicholorohydrin and bisphenol-A continues being an important intermediary in the epoxy resin technology. Microreactors have shown to improve molecular weight distribution of the synthetized polymer within these microdevices; this can be explained by the high heat and mass transfer fluxes, and the faster and better mixture shown in the microchannel due to the size reduction. In this context, the epoxy resin synthesis was studied using a laser in the rapid polymerization of the resin within these small reactors. It was studied the resin synthesis in laboratorial scale and calculated the kinetic parameters of the liquid epoxy resin obtaining reaction. Since microreactor design requires knowing the mixture behavior in the microchannels, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used in order to evaluate the mixture grade of the reagents for the tested configuration in this work, the "T" and "Y" configuration types. (AU)