Synthesizing bromobutyl rubber by a microreactor system

Bromobutyl rubber (BIIR) is an important synthetic rubber with better vulcanizing behavior than traditional butyl rubber (IIR). It is hard to synthesize for the high reactant viscosity and strong corrosion caused by Br 2 and HBr. A microreactor platform was developed to solve the corrosion problem with cheap materials and obtain high quality BIIR based on microscaled mixing. The results showed that low reaction temperature and quickly eliminating HBr from the reacting solution were crucial to obtain high selectivity of demanded molecule structure and prevent polymer from decomposition. Owing to the corrosion resistance ability, a water assistant technology was successfully implemented in the microreactor system, which produced high quality BIIR with almost 100% selectivity and less reduced molecule weight. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J , 63: 1002–1009, 2017