Nazila Yaghini
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Title: Modeling of multi-dimensional polymer chain distributions in order to determine polymer architectures
Biography
Biography: Nazila Yaghini
Abstract
Control of end-use properties of branched polymers such as low-density Polyethylene (ldPE) produced at industrial scale in the molecular level is difficult since experimental methods fail to detect most decisive microstructural properties. Therefore mathematical models have become increasingly important in predicting the interesting microstructural information and are of great interest for industrial applications. ldPE free radical polymerization is modeled deterministically for batch and tubular reactors in three independent dimensions of chain length, number of branch points and number of combination points. Scission and termination by combination reactions have been considered in the modeling scheme. Since termination by combination in the presence of transfer to polymer is known to possibly lead to gel formation, the models are tested in the gel regime. The resulted distributions from all models are in good agreement to the results obtained by Monte Carlo simulations and the gel content is correctly predicted. These results prove that the implementation of these complex multi-dimensional models is successful.