Modeling of the Copolymerization of Propylene with 1-Hexene to Predict the Copolymer Molecular Weight and Composition

Abstract

A detailed mathematical model of the propylene-1-hexene copolymerization based on the two-dimensional probability generation function technique is developed. It calculates the joint molecular weight-copolymer composition distribution (MWD-CCD) of the copolymer, as well as the average copolymer composition distribution, the molecular weight distribution (MWD), the copolymer composition distribution (CCD), average molecular weights and composition, and yield. The parallelized execution of the model code allows for obtaining the different copolymer microstructure distributions efficiently. The model allows for reaching a thorough understanding of the copolymer microstructure under different operating conditions of a semibatch reactor. It also has the potential to become a powerful tool for selecting operating conditions to obtain a material with target molecular properties.