POLYMER SOLUTION PREHEATER AND METHOD FOR PREHEATING SUCH SOLUTIONS

摘要

A polymer devolatilizationpreheater (10) and a method for using thesame to preheat a polymer/solvent solution.The preheater (10) includes an elongated,upright hollow vessel (12) defining a heatingchamber (14). An inlet (16) is located adjacentthe upper end (18) of the chamber (14) andan outlet (20) is located adjacent the lowerend (22) of the chamber (14). A plurality ofheating tube bundles (26, 28, 30) are mountedin the chamber (14), each bundle including aplurality of elongated serpentine heating tubeswhich are each arranged in a configurationhaving a major axis which extends acrossthe chamber in a direction transverse to thelongitudinal axis of the vessel. Each tube(32, 34) includes a plurality of curved tubeportions (36) and a plurality of linking tubeportions (38) which interconnect the curvedtube portions. The tube portions (36) of eachtube are all arranged in common plane thatis arranged in essential parallelism relative tothe longitudinal axis of the vessel and the tubeconfiguration is essentially rectangular so asto present a pair of opposite edges disposedin essential parallelism relative to one another.