Editor’s Note: Following is Keith Moody’s answer to the problem presented in “Polly’s Botched Scale Up” in the August 2018 issue of PCI.
Polly Mertz's first scale-up of a new emulsion polymer had resulted in the contents boiling out of a 500-gallon reactor. What had gone wrong in the acrylic emulsion production batch? Why did Al Kidd ask for Polly’s attendee name tag from the 2018 Waterborne Symposium? How was Al able to quickly solve the conundrum with the help of the badge?