SIMULATION OF BULK FREE-RADICAL POLYMERIZATION OF STYRENE IN TUBULAR REACTORS

A model that takes into consideration radial and axial changes in velo city in a tubular reactor for the thermal polymerization of styrene is used to simulate the effect of changes in inlet tube wall temperature and tube radius. The reactor performance is sensitive to the changes of these parameters. The method of orthogonal collocation is used to d iscretize the modeling equation in the radial direction and Gear metho d to solve the resulting stiff differential equations in the axial dir ection. It is found that reducing the wall temperature and the tube ra dius along the direction of the flow of the monomer reduces the variat ion in conversion between the tube center and tube wall and thus are a dvantageous.