Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.42, No.17, 3900-3913, 2003
A new phase-equilibrium model for simulating industrial nylon-6 production trains
This paper presents a thermodynamically consistent model for the phase equilibrium of water/caprolactam/nylon-6 mixtures, based on the POLYNRTL (polymer nonrandom two-liquid) activity-coefficient model. Our model predicts phase equilibrium for any binary or ternary mixture containing water, epsilon-caprolactam, and nylon-6 at industrially relevant temperatures and pressures with an average error of 1%. This paper also demonstrates its application to simulate a melt train and a bubble-gas kettle train for industrial production of nylon-6. Prior literature makes simplifying assumptions about liquid-phase (molten polymer) activities of water and E-caprolactam; these assumptions are shown to be unrealistic.