Simulation study of the nitroxide mediated copolymerization of styrene and alpha‐methyl styrene under different reactor configurations.

FORTUNATTI, C.; BRANDOLIN, A.; SARMORIA, C.; ASTEASUAIN, M.

Cancún

Congreso; Polymer Reaction Engineering VIII, ECI 2012; 2012

Engineering Conferences International

Controlled radical polymerization (CRP) has been developed since the mid-90s, offering enormous possibilities for creating materials with unique properties. CRP allows obtaining (co)polymers with controlled molecular weight and polydispersity, as well as composition and chain architecture without the restrictions of purity required for carrying out an ionic polymerization. One of the most studied mechanisms of CRP is the nitroxide mediated polymerization (NMP), in which the reaction is controlled through the reversible termination with a stable radical (TEMPO). The propagation rate is reduced by the balance between active and inactive species, which allows all chains to be initiated and grow on average at the same speed (Matyjaszewski and Davis, 2002). In this work, a mathematical model of the nitroxide mediated controlled radical copolymerization in different types of reactors: tubular (with and without side feeds), batch and semibatch, was developed. Copolymer properties including average molecular weights and composition, and the full bivariate MWD were predicted. Simulations were carried out in order to assess the influence of the different design and operating variables on the product properties for the batch, semibatch and tubular reactors. The results obtained in this work help to improve the understanding of the process and determine the appropriate settings for different final properties.