Kinetic modeling of polymerization of butadiene using cobalt‐based Ziegler–Natta catalyst

摘要

AbstractThe reaction mechanism and subsequent kinetics for polymerization of butadiene using cobalt‐based Ziegler‐Natta catalysts have been investigated by many researchers. Kinetic models developed from these investigations can be used to predict the monomer conversion quite accurately; however, it is difficult to develop models that accurately predict the molecular weight as a function of time or conversion. In this paper, an attempt is made to model the reaction mechanism for the polymerization of butadiene using the cobalt octoate/diethyl aluminum chloride/water catalyst system with data taken from the literature. A dual active site mechanism is proposed and incorporated in a kinetic model. In this case, all reaction steps except the formation of byproducts step have two rate constants. The simulation results predict the molecular weight as a function of conversion and time better than results from previously published mod