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Transient Behavior and Gelation of Free Radical Polymerizations in Continuous Stirred Tank Reactors
Author(s) -
Dias Rolando C. S.,
Costa Mário Rui P. F. N.
Publication year - 2005
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.200400086
Subject(s) - continuous stirred tank reactor , branching (polymer chemistry) , polymerization , radical polymerization , polymer chemistry , polymer , chain transfer , gel point , chemistry , kinetics , materials science , thermodynamics , chemical engineering , organic chemistry , physics , engineering , quantum mechanics
Summary: Using the authors' previously developed method for the general kinetic analysis of non‐linear irreversible polymerizations, the simulation of free radical homogeneous polymerization systems with terminal branching and chain transfer to polymer has been carried out for continuous stirred tank reactors. Its improved accuracy on the numerical evaluation of generating functions has been exploited in order to perform their numerical inversion and chain length distributions could also be estimated with or without the presence of gel. A comparison with alternative techniques emphasizing the effect of their simplifying assumptions on the accuracy of calculations is also presented.Predicted CLD before gelation ( t = 1 h), after gelation ( t = 15 h, steady state), and close to gel point for a free radical polymerization with transfer to polymer in a CSTR with τ = 60 min.