High-pressure polymerization process of ethylenically unsaturated monomers carred out in a polymerization reactor installed within a protective enclosure

A process for polymerizing or copolymerizing one or more ethylenically unsaturated monomers at temperatures from 100° C. to 350° C. and pressures in the range of from 110 MPa to 500 MPa in a production line comprising a continuously operated polymerization reactor,

• wherein polymerizing or copolymerizing is carried out in a production line in which the monomers are brought to polymerization pressure by one or more compressors in a sequence of compression stages in which the compressed gas mixture is cooled after each compression stage by a compression stage cooler, the compressed monomers are optionally passed through a pre-heater or a pre-cooler, and transferred into the polymerization reactor which is optionally cooled by cooling jackets, a reaction mixture obtained by the polymerization or copolymerization is leaving the polymerization reactor through a pressure control valve and optionally cooled by an post reactor cooler, the reaction mixture is separated into polymeric and gaseous components in two or more stages, where the gaseous components separated off in a first stage at an absolute pressure of from 15 MPa to 50 MPa are recycled to the one or more compressors via a high-pressure gas recycle line, and the gaseous components separated off in a second stage at an absolute pressure in the range of from 0.1 to 0.5 MPa are recycled to the first stage of the sequence of compression stages via a low-pressure gas recycle line, and the polymeric components obtained by the polymerization are transformed into pellets, and the polymerization reactor, the pressure control valve, a high-pressure product separator and, if present, the pre-heater or pre-cooler and the post reactor cooler are installed within a protective enclosure
• the process comprising
• monitoring the production line with respect to an occurrence of a leakage of monomers or of reaction mixture, and
• automatically starting a water based deluge system, which provides droplets of a diameter in a range from 25 μm to 20 mm to an enclosed area when a leakage of monomers or of reaction mixture is detected, and the droplets are provided with a minimum flow rate of 10 L/min per m2 of enclosed area.