Technical Report 2, c4e-Preprint Series, Cambridge

Modelling the Polymerisation of Methyl Methacrylate (MMA) in a Partially Stirred Reactor

Authors: Jethro Akroyd, Markus Kraft*, and Elmar Stöckelmann

Reference: Technical Report 2, c4e-Preprint Series, Cambridge, 2001

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Abstract

A stochastic particle model has been developed to describe the idealised free radical polymerisation of methyl methacrylate (MMA) in imperfectly mixed batch and plug flow reactors. Using the method of moments, the model allows efficient computation of the number and weight average degrees of polymerisation, higher moments, monomer conversion and (based on the Schulz-Flory distribution) the degree of polymerisation distributions, as a function of time and mixing. The model was validated against PREDICI for the homogeneous case. For non-homogeneous cases it was shown that, for some typical initial conditions, the rate of mixing has several effects at low monomer conversions, corresponding to low residence times. At large residence times, the influence of mixing disappears and the reactions converge to the homogeneous case.

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