Computational fluid dynamics simulation of gas–liquid–solid polyethylene fluidized bed reactors incorporating with a dynamic polymerization kinetic model

Abstract

A comprehensive polymerization kinetics model that includes site formation, chain initiation, chain propagation, chain transfer and chain deactivation elementary reactions was incorporated into the three-fluid computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model to describe the polymer properties in the gas–liquid–solid three-phase polyethylene fluidized bed reactor. The effect of operating conditions on polyethylene properties was firstly discussed. Furthermore, due to the importance and complexity of scaling up three-phase reactors, the incorporated CFD model was then employed to investigate the scale-up influence, which indicates that the difference of flow hydrodynamics in the reactor due to scale-up effect will result in the difference of polymerization reaction rate.