Avaliação das condições operacionais de agitação do processo reativo da produção de rincoforol

Abstract

Strategies for phytophagous arthropods control are related to the use of semiochemicals. Among these we can highlight rhyninchophorol (6-methyl-2-hepten-4-ol), the aggregation pheromone of south American palm weevil (Rhynchophorus palmarum), vector of the red ring disease (Bursaphelenchus cocophilus) in palm plantations (Arecaceae) in South America. This pheromone can be obtained through Grignard synthesis. Aiming production scale-up, a more in-depth study of the stirring and mixing operations involved in the reaction process of rhynchophorol production is made necessary. This work sought to deepen the operations involved in this process through three fronts: 1) the determination of operating temperatures for the process chemical reactions through the development of a temperature monitoring system, 2) the creation of a computer program for non-invasive determination of the reaction yield through computational image analysis and 3) the modeling and simulation of the system's fluid dynamics using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques to predict the conditions of agitation and mixing in the reactor. A temperature datalogger was created using an open source microcontroller. A temperature of 25oC for a safe operation of the Grignard reagent formation reaction and a maximum temperature of 40oC for initialization of this reaction were suggested. A Python language computer program capable of determining the reaction kinetics and the reaction yield through colorimetry was developed. Multiphase transient modeling in CFD was performed, simulations indicated solids suspension cloud height greater than 90% of the liquid level for an agitation speed of 1200 RPM.