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Influence of reactor operational policies on distributions of chemical composition, molar mass, sequence length and sequence frequency of multicomponent polymers obtained by free‐radical polymerization
Author(s) -
Engelmann Uwe,
SchmidtNaake Gudrun
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
macromolecular theory and simulations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1521-3919
pISSN - 1022-1344
DOI - 10.1002/mats.1994.040030118
Subject(s) - molar mass , maleic anhydride , methyl methacrylate , polymer , copolymer , sequence (biology) , homogeneity (statistics) , styrene , polymerization , molar mass distribution , chemistry , polymer chemistry , chemical composition , methacrylate , radical polymerization , materials science , chemical engineering , organic chemistry , mathematics , biochemistry , statistics , engineering
Remarkable shifts in chemical composition, molar mass, sequence length and sequence frequency will occur in the course of free‐radical multicomponent polymerizations, if the reactivities of the comonomers are different and a simple batch reactor is used. It is shown for the terpolymerization system of methyl methacrylate/styrene/maleic anhydride that a semi‐batch reactor with appropriate regimes is suitable to obtain products with improved chemical, molecular and sequential homogeneity. However, if polymers with defined inhomogeneities like bimodal molar mass or chemical composition distributions are desired, these are also obtainable by use of appropriate operational policies, which will be illustrated for the homopolymerization of methyl methacrylate and the binary copolymerization of methyl methacrylate/maleic anhydride. Concerning the instantaneous mean chemical composition of polymer molecules, which cannot be measured directly, a new procedure is presented to determine this quantity experimentally.