Kinetics of Butylacrylate Polymerization in a Starved Feed Reactor
writer:Gui-Ping Cao, Zhong-Nan Zhu, Ming-Hua Zhang, Wei-Kang Yuan
keywords:starved feed reactor,radical polymerization,kinetics (polym.),n-butylacrylate,initiators
source:期刊
Issue time:2004年
A starved feed reactor (SFR) is a semibatch
polymerization reactor where initiator and monomer are fed
slowly into a fixed amount of solvent. The polymerization is
carried out isothermally at elevated temperatures. The
added initiator decomposes instantaneously and the added
monomer polymerizes immediately. The molecular weight
of the product polymer can be effectively controlled by the
feed ratio of monomer to initiator. This article presents a
study on the kinetics of butylacrylate polymerization in an
SFR. The model parameters are regressed with experimental
data. Although the solids fraction in the SFR is high (50%),
viscosity is not high and the “gel effect” is weak because of
the low molecular weight of the products. It is found that the
termination rate constant is a power function of molecular
weight, and the lumped rate constant kp/(kt
0)1/2 can be modeled
through an Arrhenius equation.