Simulation of the effects of chain architecture on the sorption of ethylene in polyethylene

J Chem Phys. 2004 Jun 15;120(23):11304-15. doi: 10.1063/1.1751178.

Abstract

An osmotic ensemble hyperparallel tempering technique has been developed to study the solubility of ethylene in amorphous linear low-density polyethylene of different chain architectures. The NERD united-atom force field (Nath, Escobedo, and de Pablo revised united-atom force field) is used in all simulations. We have investigated the effect of polyethylene chain length and branching on ethylene solubility. In this study, we have considered short-chain branching of amorphous linear low-density ethylene-1-hexene copolymers under typical polymerization reactor conditions. It is observed that, in the polymer, ethylene prefers to reside in the vicinity of polymer chain ends. This clustering causes a decrease in ethylene solubility with polymer chain length. When short-chain branches are introduced to a linear polymer chain, however, the chain-end clustering effect is counteracted by a higher density, thereby leading to an ethylene solubility almost identical to that in the linear polymer.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adsorption
  • Computer Simulation
  • Ethylenes / chemistry*
  • Macromolecular Substances / chemistry*
  • Models, Chemical*
  • Models, Molecular*
  • Molecular Conformation
  • Polyethylene / chemistry*

Substances

  • Ethylenes
  • Macromolecular Substances
  • Polyethylene
  • ethylene