Morphogenesis of polyolefin particles in polymerization reactors

The evolution of the spatially 2D or 3D morphology of porous polymer particles during their growth in the catalytic polymerization of olefins is addressed by the concept of discrete element method (DEM). The polyolefin particle is discretized into number of micro-elements with visco-elastic interactions acting among individual micro-elements. The evolution of this agglomerate of micro-elements is employed in the prediction of particle morphology and in the mapping from the parametric space of the architecture of catalyst particles and reactor conditions into the space of final particle morphologies. First-principles based models of particle morphogenesis can be employed to avoid unwanted phenomena in industrial reactors, e. g., the disintegration of growing polymer particles into fines or the fouling of particles at reactor walls.