A Kinetic Monte Carlo Simulation of Individual Site Type of Ethylene and α-Olefins Polymerization

The aim of this work is to study Monte Carlo simulation of ethylene (co)polymerization over Ziegler-Natta catalyst as investigated by Chen et al. The results revealed that the Monte Carlo simulation was similar to sum square error (SSE) model to prediction of stage II and III of polymerization. In the case of activation stage (stage I) both model had slightly deviation from experimental results. The modeling results demonstrated that in homopolymerization, SSE was superior to predict polymerization rate in current stage while for copolymerization, Monte Carlo had preferable prediction. The Monte Carlo simulation approved the SSE results to determine role of each site in total polymerization rate and revealed that homopolymerization rate changed from site to site and order of center was different compared to copolymerization. The polymer yield was reduced by addition of hydrogen amount however there was no specific effect on uptake curve which was predicted by Monte Carlo simulation with good accuracy. In the case of copolymerization it was evolved that monomer chain length and monomer concentration influenced the rate of polymerization as rate of polymerization reduced from 1-hexene to 1-octene and increased when monomer concentration proliferate.