Investigation into the effect of branch length of polyolefin and its statistical distribution on the flow improving performance

Abstract

Ultra high molecular weight polyolefins as the main category of drag reducing agents play the main role in energy transportation. The present study seek to thoroughly investigate, the implications of several determining factors, such as catalyst structure, monomer type and concentration, in the coordinative polymerization of 1-olefins coupled with the corresponding accumulative effect of these precursors on the potential behavior of drag reducing macromolecules. The results showed that polymerization temperature is the most important parameter affecting polymer performance in drag reduction due to the increase in polymer molecular weight with decreasing the polymerization temperature. It was also observed that a type of monomer plays an important role in the drag reduction. The results showed that polyhexene had a higher performance than the polydecene, due to the amorphous structure of the polymer, which can evidently be corroborated by DSC analysis. The experimental results verified that polymers produced with late transition metal catalysts have lower performance in drag reduction efficiency than polymers synthesized with Ziegler-Natta catalysts. Having considered the distribution and the length of side chains in macromolecules chain (synthesized via ZN and Late transition metal ones) as well as their performance, it can surely be assumed that uniformity of side chain branches in the boosting of polymer capacity concerning drag reduction efficiency is of paramount significance. This is definitely an issue of paramount significance in tailoring functional structures.