The
objective of this study is to evaluate the Joule–Thomson
effect, which occurs at a valve due to the throttling process for
mixtures containing polymers and copolymers. For economic and safety
reasons, it is essential to know the temperature change in industrial
processes due to the pressure drop in the valve. The modeling of this
phenomenon in mixtures containing polymers and copolymers, however,
remains a challenge for process engineers, and the literature rarely
reports studies on the subject. This work proposes a model that can
directly compute temperature due to the throttling process using the
concept of residual enthalpy and the perturbed-chain statistical associating
fluid theory equation of state, instead of solely computing the Joule–Thomson
coefficient. Systems containing poly(ethylene-co-vinyl
acetate) and low-density polyethylene were chosen as case studies
because of the need for temperature control at the reactor outlet
and separation processes. The model prediction was validated using
industrial data, and deviations of approximately 2% between the model
prediction and the experimental temperature indicate the efficiency
of the proposed approach when describing the temperature due to the
throttling of both systems that are being studied.