Emulsion Homopolymerization of Isoprene. Calculation of the Detailed Macromolecular Structure

VIRGINIA RODRÍGUEZ; ROQUE MINARI; DIANA ESTENOZ; LUIS GUGLIOTTA; GREGORIO MEIRA

Río de Janeiro (Brasil)

Congreso; World Polymer Congress - MACRO 2006; 2006

A mathematical model for the batch emulsion polymerization of isoprene (Is) is presented, that predicts the detailed macromolecular structure of the produced rubber. The model was extended from Ref. [1], to estimate the characteristics of the about 15 different polymer topologies that are produced, each of them characterized by the number of branches per molecule. The model predicts the monomer conversion, the univariate molecular weight distribution (MWD) of each polymer topology, and the MWD and the degree of branching distribution (DBD) of the total polymer. The model was validated from global measurements of conversion, average molecular weights, and average degrees of branching along the homopolimerization.