Styrene Removal Before Vacuum Pumps

It depends on just how much unreacted styrene your raw material (polystyrene)has in it.

One effective method is a 'cold trap', which is simply a refrigerated heat exchanger on whose surface the styrene vapors condense. Periodically the cold trap must be warmed up and the styrene liquid removed. If the loading is such that the warm-up interval disrupts production, simply installing parallel units is a simple solution.

Be careful when warming up the trap as styrene monomer will tend to polymerize, liberating significant heat. Styrene monomer in any significant quantity should be refrigerated and stored only with stabilizer added.

you can also use 3 activated charcoal filters in series with a manifold to allow for the first filter to be taken out to steam purge it, number two becomes number 1, and number 3 becomes two and a fresh purged unit becomes the new number three.

hot steam purges the styrene adsorbed on the carbon. They are then dried and go back into the system. from time to time new carbon is needed as the old gets blocked with polymer.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22styrene+adsorption%22+%2B%22activated+carbon%22&btnG=Google+Search

Styrene removal: I would suggest either a solvent-filled filter, or a solid particulate filter, such as Dry-rite granules, would do the job. Also investigate adding a dilute peroxide solution to either the solvent or particular filter that might polymerize and remove the styrene vapor.

if you bubble the extracted gasses over a solvent, it needs to be a high boiler that is fully miscible with Styrene. A low boiler = same problem. In time this solvent trap will need to be baked out or changed.

There also needs to be a high degree of contact, think plates in a still, to avoid pass through in spite of the solvent pool.

It may be possible to use porous beads wetted with the high boiling solvent, with capillary action maintaining the beads wet and preveneting gravity pooling.

This has to be a problem encountered in dealing with styrene monomer.