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Markovian Approach to Free‐Radical Polymerization with Simultaneous Long‐Chain Branching and Scission: Effect of Branching and Scission Kinetics
Author(s) -
Tobita Hidetaka
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
macromolecular reaction engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.37
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1862-8338
pISSN - 1862-832X
DOI - 10.1002/mren.201400042
Subject(s) - branching (polymer chemistry) , kinetics , bond cleavage , chemistry , polymerization , chain scission , thermodynamics , radical polymerization , polyethylene , markov chain , monomer , polymer chemistry , polymer , materials science , mathematics , organic chemistry , physics , catalysis , statistics , quantum mechanics
The effect of branching and scission kinetics on the branched structure formation is investigated by using the analytic solution for the weight‐average chain length in a matrix formula,P ¯ w = w s w + wFI − M− 1 s and the Monte Carlo simulation method, both based on the Markov chain statistics. The illustrative calculations, envisaged for the production of low‐density polyethylene, showed that the effect of different kinetics employed for the present study could be negligible when the final monomer conversion is smaller than about 25%, normally used for the commercial production processes. On the other hand, if the polymerization is continued up to higher conversion range, the functional forms for branching and scission kinetics start to show significant effects on the formed branched structure.