EMULSION COPOLYMERIZATION OF ACRYLONITRILE AND BUTADIENE. CALCULATION OF THE DETAILED MACROMOLECULAR STRUCTURE

A novel mathematical model is developed that predicts the detailed macromolecular structure of an acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber (NBR) produced in an industrial emulsion polymerization. The model consists of: (i) a basic module that calculates the monomer conversion and the copolymer composition; (ii) a particle size distribution module; and (iii) a macromolecular structure module that calculates the bivariate chain length distributions of the linear fraction and of each branched topology (characterized by the number of branching points per molecule). From the bivariate distributions, the univariate distributions of molecular weights, copolymer composition, and degrees of branching are obtained. The model was validated from global measurements of conversion, average molecular weights, average composition, and average degrees of branching.