Transition into the gel regime for free radical crosslinking polymerisation in a batch reactor

Abstract

Crosslinking polymerization has been studied by means of a four-dimensional population balance model accounting for chain length, free pending double bonds, crosslinks, and multiradicals as dimensions. The model, for the first time and to a full extent resolves the crosslinking problem as formulated by Zhu et al. [1] and covers both pre-gel and gel regimes, in a straightforward manner. Approximations on radial basis functions have been employed to reduce the size of the system with minimal information loss. The model has been validated with data from an experimental crosslinking polymerization, Methyl Methacrylate with Ethylene Glycol Dimethacrylate. Non-trivial patterns in the time evolution of average quantities like crosslink densities, partly observed in prior studies [2–4], are naturally emerging from the model by computing marginals of the four-dimensional distribution possessing an interesting multimodal structure.