From Fundamental Polymerization Kinetics to Process Application—A Realistic Vision?

Abstract

This contribution presents a ramble through the past, inspecting the developments of fundamental scientific investigations into the elementary reaction steps of polymerizations. Often the question arises whether benefits from fundamental scientific investigation find their way into industrial practice and how these pay off in better understanding large‐scale processes. The high‐pressure ethene polymerization is the system of interest here because 1) it is a complex process with a world production of several million tons per year and 2) although dealing with system pressures up to 3000 bar is not an easy task, a long history—if not tradition—exists between the scientific efforts to improve the process and the research groups of Franck and Buback in Karlsruhe, Schönemann and Luft in Darmstadt, and later Buback in Göttingen. The scope of this discussion will range from non‐invasive on‐ and in‐line monitoring by spectroscopic methods up to process modeling by advanced kinetic models and their potential for explorative work.magnified image