Study of input parameter changes toward low density polyethylene's product properties

Abstract

Low-density polyethylene (LDPE) is one of the most widely used polymers in the world. The significance of LDPE polymerization process has created numerous works of modelling and simulation of LDPE tubular reactors. A thorough mathematical model for LDPE should be capable to present the profiles of initiator conversion, monomer conversion, reaction temperature and pressure, the moments of free-radical, and polymer chain length distribution. The sensitivity study is the observation of relationship between information flowing in and out of the model. The main point of sensitivity study is to determine the relative importance of model parameter and inputs in deciding output. In this work, the sensitivity study of input parameter in industrial low density polyethylene tubular reactor is discussed by manipulating several input parameters. The inclusion of LDPE melt flow index in the reactor output was identified as novelty of this work. The highest monomer conversion observed was 16.34 %, which was obtained when the reference initiator flow rate was timed by 2.5 factor. The peak temperature and melt flow index were also increased from reference's case study obtained values of 250 °C to 320 °C, and 5.12 g/10 min to 14.21 g/10 min, respectively. From this study, monomer flow rate, initiator flow rate and solvent flow rate are identified to give significant effect to the performance of LDPE process in tubular reactor.