Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada
Abstract:
Two different modeling techniques, the method of moments and Monte Carlo simulation, were compared for propylene polymerization with coordination catalysts including a new mechanistic step, site transformation by electron donors. We used the models to show how the molecular weight and tacticity distributions of several poly(propylene) chain populations were affected by changing the concentration of hydrogen, electron donor, and propylene in the reactor, under steady‐state or dynamic operating conditions. The Monte Carlo simulation describes the molecular weight and tacticity distributions for the whole polymer and chain populations with distinct microstructural characteristics. We have also applied the Monte Carlo model to simulate the pentad sequence distributions and its equivalent 13C NMR spectra.