Modeling of Slurry Polymerization of Ethylene Using a Soluble Cp₂ZrCl₂/MAO Catalytic System

Abstract

Abstract The slurry homopolymerization of ethylene catalyzed by a Cp 2 ZrCl 2 /MAO catalytic system was studied. A simple kinetic model including initiation, propagation, transfer to monomer and cocatalyst, spontaneous transfer and spontaneous deactivation was developed to predict dynamic yield of polymerization and molecular weight of final products. Kinetic constants were estimated by numerical solution of polymerization kinetic model, combined with Nelder‐Mead simplex method. The model predicts that the propagation reaction has the lower activation energy in relation to chain transfer reactions which leads to decrease of molecular weight at elevated temperatures. The initiation reaction has however, the highest activation energy that results in raising the peak of reaction rate at higher temperatures. magnified image