Optimization of the nitroxide mediated opolymerization of styrene and alpha-methyl styrene

FORTUNATTI, CECILIA; SARMORIA, CLAUDIA; BRANDOLIN, ADRIANA; ASTEASUAIN, MARIANO

Pittsburgh

Congreso; 2012 AIChE Annual Meeting; 2012

American Institute of Chemical Engineers

Controlled radical polymerization (CRP) offers enormous possibilities for creating new materials with controlled architecture. All CRP techniques are based on establishing a reversible equilibrium between active and inactive chains so that the number of active chains is small, something that reduces the total effect of termination. CRP allows obtaining (co) polymers with controlled molecular weight and polydispersity, as well as composition and chain architecture. In previous works we presented a mathematical model of the copolymerization of styrene and alpha methyl styrene in tubular and semibatch reactors that is able to predict average molecular properties as well as the full bivariate MWD and the sequence length distribution of the copolymer. In this work, this model is used in a optimization scheme with the objective of obtaining resins with pre-specified molecular properties. The optimization space included reactor design variables and operating policies, such as reactor configuration, initial charge, feeding policy and temperature profile. The performance and flexibility of two reactor types, semibatch and tubular with side feeds, is analyzed and compared.