Maleation of Polypropylene Melt in Model Reactors

Abstract

The maleation of polypropylene melt with a peroxide as free radical initiator has been carried out isothermally in a continuous flow reactor and in a batch flow reactor. The continuous flow reactor is designed to provide significant levels of extensional strain in the fluid while the batch flow reactor provides a simple shear flow with uniform residence time. In both reactors, less than 1 part per hundred of dicumyl peroxide (dissolved in xylene) is added to a preblended single phase mixture of polymer melt and dibutyl maleate. The relative extent of maleation is much higher in the continuous flow reactor than in the batch reactor with comparable shear strain rates and mean residence times. As the feed rate and the rotation speed are varied at a fixed temperature in the continuous flow reactor, the highest degree of maleation is obtained under conditions where fluid dynamics computations show the stretching of a fluid element to be the greatest. Hence, increasing shear alone leads to rather limited increases in extent of maleation. These results emphasize the importance of the detailed deformation field for carrying out functionalization reactions on polymer melts.