Using PVT data for the supercritical hydrogenation of polybutadiene

MATÍAS MENOSSI; JUAN MANUEL MILANESIO; ANDRES CIOLINO; LIDIA MARÍA QUINZANI; MARCELO SANTIAGO ZABALOY

Mar del Plata

Simposio; XVI Latin-American Polymer Symposium (SLAP 2018); 2018

Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata

ORAL PRESENTATIONLinear low-density polyethylene (PE) with a polydispersity index (PD) close to 1 can be obtained by hydrogenating polybutadienes (PBs) with narrow molecular weight distributions. In the hydrogenation of unsaturated heavy compounds, the system always presents, at least, two fluid phases during the reaction progress. The presence of an interphase implies lower mass transfer rates. The large difference in molecular size between the hydrogen (H2) and PB molecules, implies a high immiscibility level1. This could be overcome by using a supercritical fluid o solvent mixture as reaction medium to carry out the process under single fluid phase conditions. To hydrogenate the PB under single phase conditions, the solvent (or solvent mixture) should be able to simultaneously dissolve the PB, the H2 and the reaction products. The goals of this work are: (1) to obtain new PVT behaviour for the quaternary system ?n-pentane (C5) + dimethyl ether (DME) + H2 + PB?; (2) to use these data to carry out the hydrogenation of the unsaturated polymer in the single-phase region as it was done in previous works2, and (3) to analyse the influence of two important variables in supercritical hydrogenation experiments such as: amount of H2 loaded to the reactor and stirring of the reactive mixture.