Acrylic Resins - Case Study

The Customer
The Specialty Chemical Company manufactures a variety of colored, acrylic resins with properties such as impact resistance and excellent optics. The resins are used in lighting applications, tail light lenses and other molded and decorative items.

The Process
Off-gas (methyl methacrylate) from the manufacturing process is collected in a process vent header that feeds a scrubber. The scrubber ultimately cleans the sample more, so it can go to the Vapor Recovery Unit.

To save money on their steam cycle, the Company decided to continuously monitor their process and add water as needed instead of having a constant water flow.

To do this, they used two infrared analyzers to monitor the %LFL of methyl methacrylate entering the process vent header. If the %LFL reading went above 60, they would add more water/steam to the scrubber to scrub the sample before it went to the Vapor Recovery Unit.