Polyolefins are made with molecules that contain only carbon and hydrogen atoms, but despite of this deceiving simplicity, polyolefins find applications ranging from domestic appliances, automotive and aeronautical parts, and biomedical devices. Polyolefins are versatile because ethylene, propylene, and higher a-olefins can be combined in many different ways to make polyolefins with novel properties.<br/>The number of polyolefin characterization techniques available today reflects the importance polymer microstructure has on polyolefin applications. Polyolefins are routinely analyzed not only by general techniques such as NMR, FTIR, DSC, and GPC, but also by other methods that were specifically developed to investigate their microstructures, such as TREF, CRYSTAF, CEF, TREF-GPC, and more recently HT-TGIC and HT-SGIC. We need these techniques to understand how the microstructure of polyolefins affects their mechanical, rheological and thermal properties. One may argue that without these characterization techniques, many of the modern developments in polyolefin catalysis and polymer reaction engineering would not have been possible.<br/>Therefore, we have simple monomers on one hand, and polydisperse polymer products on the other. We add to this mix the different types of catalysts, reactor configurations, and polymerization conditions that are used to make polyolefins, and we are left with a very complex problem on our hands. In this talk we will show how to develop models that combine polymerization kinetics and reactor mathematical models with polyolefin microstructural characterization results to understand existing polyolefins and design new polyolefins with controlled properties using single- and multiple-site catalysts.

Impact of polyolefin characterization techniques on polyolefin reaction engineering

251st National Meeting (2016)

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