Macrokinetics of Polybutadiene Production on a Titanium Ziegler–Natta Catalyst System Prepared in Turbulent Flows

Abstract

The research was directed at establishing the dependence of the disperse composition of particles of TiCl4–Al(i-C4H9)3 catalytically active precipitate, and their activity and molecular weight characteristics of polybutadiene formed in their presence on the length of sections and the confuser diameter of the tubular turbulent apparatus of diffuser–confuser design used to prepare a catalytic system in turbulent flows. An approach that combines methods of computational fluid dynamics (ANSYS Workbench 17.1 platform) and formal kinetics, and solves inverse problems of kinetics has been used to solve the stated problem. The following required dependences were established based on numerical experiments on the models developed using this approach: (1) the hydrodynamics of the process of dispersing particles of TiCl4–Al(i-C4H9)3 catalytically active precipitate in a tubular turbulent apparatus with diffuser–confuser design, and (2) macrokinetics of butadiene polymerization on the particles of TiCl4–Al(i-C4H9)3 catalytically active precipitate dispersed in turbulent flows (batch reactor, the solvent was toluene, and the temperature of the process was 25°С).