Chemical Engineering @ChemengFiles.Com

After two years of cramming and failing to repeat, an Argentine research team led by Dr. Gustavo Bianchi achieved for the first time polyacrylamides, a type of complex organic molecules key to clean up hazardous industrial liquid discharges heavily questioned, such as mining, paper manufacturing, the petroleum, gas, and the textile industry.

All of the above import large quantities of these polymers and pay between 3,000 and 8,000 dollars per tonne. Not only to clean water, but also because some use polyacrylamides in their processes to separate the useful from the useless.

This development, financed by Link Chemical, a small firm of Monte Grande, imports can prevent 50 to $ 80 million per year (approximate current Argentine consumption polyacrylamide, according to Bianchi) and open a regional market of 40 million dollars per year by 2013.

The powerful Chilean mining and start shopping in Monte Grande. Argentina intolerance to water pollution grows, and with it also increases the use of these molecules "cleansing", which is manufactured from increasingly expensive oil.

With gas at low prices in the country, the "window of opportunity" to develop local polyacrylamides with the revival began in 2002. But it is not blowing and making bottles: it implies a perfect control of nonlinear chemical reactions of fiendish complexity. There are so many difficulties to overcome than any university or national firm could or wanted to address them.

The plants designed by the Bianchi team brings to three, and are not mere laboratory prototypes, but industrial-scale equipment, operational.

It is not commonplace in the country that an SME ad hoc organized around a technology does not exist locally hired an outside expert local team to create it, hold it two years and suddenly comes up with a complex product which already produces 24 tons per month. Bianchi, chemical, Ph.D. is an expert in materials at the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), where the blanks as project manager. From there he went to the oil world, where their technological achievements, all made in Argentina-were able to double in two years the turnover of a firm well services Texan who sold the fourth year, eight times its original value.

Aeronautical Engineers Project Link also passed by the CNEA. As the country is unfortunately no longer manufactured aircraft had to be rescheduled to apply their knowledge of fluid dynamics of reactors that do not fly, appliances that stay on the ground making complex materials.

This sort of "air circus landed" was under the directorate of two experts in organic chemistry, Dr. Silvia Aimone and the lawyer Eugenio Otero. And the equivalent of the "Red Baron" was Bianchi, who listened to ideas, contributed his own, hired specialists and put the time to reach destination on time.

The precursors of polyacrylamides are acrylic acid and acrylamide, made to turn natural gas. Tucked in a reactor, these precursors begin a process that releases large amounts of heat and free radicals, molecular species chemically hyperactive. If left unchecked though these two variables, are points in the reactor overheated, the aqueous phase boils uncontrollably and disasters can occur. The minor is being lost all the materials and process, and Bianchi happened n times. The biggest is to break the reactor and burned a worker, which was avoided by using extreme security measures.

Aeronautical engineers spent two years of designing, redesigning discarding and stirring systems that would ensure "Brownian motion" around the reactor volume. In this type of motion of a fluid, the molecules are randomly assail each other, as bumper cars, impelled by its thermal energy. It is the only way to disperse throughout the reactor hazardous factors: hot spots and too rich in free radicals. And this is hard to do, especially in a medium whose viscosity increases as the reaction progresses madly. As it happens, "the devil is in the details."

"The agitation systems are our jewel, our top-secret technology," says Bianchi, who declined to photograph the jets left inside. Do not think they are very different from those of other countries, but invented and perfected a lung. "

To be free of patents, Argentine polyacrylamides can sell urbi et orbi. Link is now supplying services companies in Argentina and Chile, which in turn are suppliers of oil companies, gas, paper, textiles, mining and water distribution. In five years, plan to capture 20% of the South American market and also manufacture acrylic acid and acrylamide precursors of polyacrylamides. It will not be easy. "At some point," says Bianchi, "we will have to produce precursors from 'green carbon', ie organic matter. And no doubt that we will do: it is a matter of using the gray matter. And in the Argentina, there is and good.