Title: Polymerization of polypropylene in Stirred Tank Reactor and modify by maleic

anhydride.
Akash Thakre (19CHE202), Chetan Bhole (19POL202), Ashwini Meshram (19OIL202)
A stirred tank reactor tends to give better mixing properties with its high gas hold-up and stirring
action. This stirred tank reactor is a semi-batch reactor as the gas phase is the continuous phase
here. In a literature survey it is found that the polymerization process proceeds at temperature 60-
800C and pressure 30-40 atm. Therefore the temperature and pressure is considered as an
optimum temperature and pressure for the initial experimental runs. The tank was first optimized
by performing some gas-liquid phase experiments, where the gas phase used was air and the
liquid phase as water. The optimization results showed the performances of different impellers
including the size of impeller, spargers by studying the parameters like gas hold-up and
hydrodynamic regimes.
The tank is first filled with the catalyst and chain transfer agent. The reactor is then set at
temperature 600C and 30 atm so to keep propylene in liquid form. Propylene gas is then sparged
at fixed gas flow-rate. The stirring speed is kept such that it obtains a total recirculation
hydrodynamic regime. Polypropylene is formed in bulk converted into pallets by palletizers.
The polypropylene is functionalized in two different ways. Grafting of polypropylene with
maleic anhydride and initiator were performed by melt mixing in an optimum condition for
processing in Rheometer at 180Cº, 60 rpm and 10 min. In first step, changes the concentration of
maleic anhydride and in second step keep the concentration of maleic anhydride constant which
is gives best result in first step and change the concentration of initiator for other best results.
All crude graft PP samples were dissolved in xylene in order to remove the non- reacted
monomers and oligomers if formed during process and initiator by refluxing in xylene for 4
hours and precipitated in acetone. Finally, they were dried in a vacuum oven at 105 Cº for 3
hours to constant weights.
The properties of maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene is studied by titration method, contact
angle method and Differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) for study of thermal behavior of
polymer.