Two-phase multi-scale modeling of a tubular loop propylene polymerization reactor

Abstract

In the present paper a new two-phase multi-scale mathematical model of a tubular loop reactor is presented to describe the bulk polymerization of propylene. The model comprises transient mass and energy balances for the liquid and solid phases and population balance equations to describe the spatio-temporal evolution of the particles size distributions. Particularly, the mathematical modeling approach presented here also takes into account inter-phase transport phenomena for the first time for this class of reactors. As shown through computational simulations, inter-phase mass and energy transport constraints can exert significant influence on the properties of the final product and should not be neglected a priori.

Keywords

• Loop reactor
• Polypropylene
• Two phase model
• Population balance
• Particle size distribution