Study of Slurry Ethylene Polymerization with Ziegler-Natta Catalysts: Kinetics and Investigation on the Rate of Monomer Consumption Equation

In the current work, ethylene polymerization was investigated from a mathematical modeling point of view. The initiation (activation), propagation, termination, and deactivation reactions were taken into account and the relevant equations used in the modeling were obtained from the elementary reactions. Some assumptions including neglecting the transfer and deactivation reactions were considered to simplify the modeling. According to the results obtained, these assumptions were only applicable to the initial stages of the polymerization reaction, namely the first 20 min of the reaction.Finally, transfer to monomer and deactivation reaction was also included in the improved version of the model and a new equation acceptably matching the experimental results was developed for the rate of the polymerization.