LIVING POLYMERIZATION REACTORS .1. MODELING AND SIMULATION OF FLOW REACTORS OPERATED UNDER CYCLICAL-STEADY-STATE FEED CONDITIONS FOR THE CONTROL OF MOLECULAR-WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION
Rg. Gosden et al., LIVING POLYMERIZATION REACTORS .1. MODELING AND SIMULATION OF FLOW REACTORS OPERATED UNDER CYCLICAL-STEADY-STATE FEED CONDITIONS FOR THE CONTROL OF MOLECULAR-WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION, Polymer reaction engineering, 3(4), 1995, pp. 331-359
It has been shown through the use of computer-based models that it is
possible purposefully to control the molecular weight and molecular we
ight distribution of the products from living polymerisation processes
by using appropriate forcing functions for the reagent feeds to diffe
rent types of flow reactors. The algorithm which has been developed is
unique in that explicit molecular weight distribution (MWD) envelopes
are generated very rapidly. The work described here relates specifica
lly to an ideal single-stage continuous-flow stirred tank reactor (CST
R); i.e. it has been assumed that the living polymerisation chemistry
is devoid of mechanistic complexity, that isothermal conditions are ma
intained throughout reaction, and that the reactors behave in an ideal
manner. However, the predictive capacity of the models is not constra
ined by these assumptions and can be extended to accommodate any type
of living polymerisation process and more complex reactor conditions.
The predictions of the theoretical model obtained by computer simulati
on show good agreement with experiment and the algorithm itself has be
en tested using a number of mathematical and computational procedures;
details of this work are presented in Part 2.