Polymer Engineering and Science, Vol.47, No.11, 1839-1846, 2007
A stochastic flow model for a tubular solution polymerization reactor
Residence time distributions were evaluated experimentally for three tubular solution polymerization reactors to analyze aspects of the fluid-dynamic behavior of these reactors. The analysis of the available experimental data indicates that the flow characteristics of these reactors may be subject to stochastic perturbations. A stochastic flow model is then proposed by assuming that a viscous polymer layer is formed in the proximities of the reactor walls and that plugs of polymer material are released at random during the operations. This model is able to represent the available experimental data fairly well for three tubular reactors with different configurations.