Emulsion Copolymerization of Acrylonitrile and Butadiene. Calculation of the Detailed Macromolecular Structure

RODRIGUEZ, V.; ESTENOZ, D. A.; GUGLIOTTA, L. M.; MEIRA, G. R.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLYMERIC MATERIALS

Taylor & Francis

Lugar: New York; Año: 2002 vol. 51 p. 511 - 527

0091-4037

A novel mathematical model is developed that predicts the detailed macromolecular structure of an acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber (NBR) produced in an industrial emulsion polymerization. The model consists of: (i) a basic module that calculates the monomer conversion and the copolymer composition; (ii) a particle size distribution module; and (iii) a macromolecultar structure module that calculates the bivariate chain length distributions of the linear fraction and of each branched topology (characterized by the number of branching points per molecule). From the bivariate distributions, the univariate distributions of molecular weights, copolymer composition, and degrees of branching are obtained. The model was validated from global measumerements of conversion, average molecular weights, average composition, and average degrees of branching.