Influence of micromixing on the free‐radical polymerization in a discontinuous process

With the help of a simple reaction‐diffusion model with constant striation thickness the influence of micromixing on free‐radical polymerization was investigated for several test reactions with discontinuous prepolymerization and jerky addition of selected reactants. Monomer conversion or mean values of molar mass and chemical composition cannot be expected to be very sensitive to micromixing effects. If molar mass distributions are to be used, problems will arise from the fact that the distribution of the polymer accumulated during prepolymerization covers mixing influences occurring after reactant feed. The instantaneous molar mass distribution would be more suitable. Time‐integral distributions of chemical composition or sequence length in combination with appropriate test reactions proved to be feasible indicators for the effects of micromixing as it becomes possible to separate the distribution of the prepolymer from that of the polymer which is formed after addition when micromixing is to be investigated.