Step-Growth Polymerization Process Modeling and Product Design

This textbook teaches senior or graduate-level students and practitioners how to quantitatively model step-growth polymerization plants and predict the properties of the product polymer. The book captures the quantitative relationships between key process input variables (KPIVs) and key process output variables (KPOVs), and focuses on the integrated modeling of an entire polymer manufacturing train (including reactors, separators, recycle coolers/condensers, etc.), not merely reactors alone. To model such a wide range of unit operations, the book integrates all of our fundamental models of physical and thermodynamic properties, phase equilibrium, polymerization kinetics, heat- and mass-transfer limitations, together with predictive or empirical models of polymer end-use properties and computer-aided design tools.