Numerical Simulation for Reactive Polymer Phase Separation Systems

2 Numerical Simulation for Reactive Polymer Phase Separation Systems 

Since that FRRPP process was developed as the sum of phase separation term and the reaction term, the phase separation term was solved through the methods presented in Section 1.4. The reaction part was derived in Section 1.5.1 and resulted in Eq. (1.5.14). Its closed form solution is given by 

For the experimental system extensively analyzed in Section 1.4, concentrations of 7 wt%/3 wt%/90 wt% were used for PMAA/MAA/water, respectively. However, for the FRRPP process, simulation was started with only MAA and water, at 10 wt% MAA (Cj = 0.10) in water (Cj = 0.90). The MAA polymerized to form of PMAA due to the decomposition of the initiator molecules. The final composition, assuming that all monomers reacted, was 10 wt% PMAA in water. Here, it was assumed that the specific gravity of MAA is almost equal to that of PMAA. 

The extent of percent completion, pk, for the reaction process was defined as 

Composition profiles for the ERRPP process,M ( j, were obtained as 

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