Device and methods for determination of molecular weight distributions of polymers and distributions of other polymer properties without physical separation

Patent · Tue Oct 18 00:00:00 EDT 2022

OSTI ID:1986712

Reed, Wayne Frederick; Montgomery, Rick D.; Drenski, Michael Felix; Wu, Aide

Devices and methods for determining the cumulative distribution of a polymer property in a reactor without physical separation of reaction subcomponents. The device includes a means of measuring an instantaneous property of the polymers being produced in a reaction vessel a plurality of times during a polymerization reaction as well as a means of determining the corresponding change in polymer concentration in the reaction vessel between measurements of the instantaneous polymer property The device also includes a means of computing a statistical distribution appropriate to the polymer characteristic and applying the statistical distribution to a recently measured instantaneous value of the polymer property so as to have an instantaneous distribution of the polymer property and a means of adding together the instantaneous distributions of the polymer property in order to obtain the cumulative distribution of the polymer property in the reactor.

• Research Organization: Advanced Polymer Monitoring Technologies, Inc., New Orleans, LA (United States); Tulane Univ., New Orleans, LA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: EE0005776
• Assignee: Advanced Polymer Monitoring Technologies, Inc. (New Orleans, LA); Administrators of the Tulane Educational Fund (New Orleans, LA)
• Patent Number(s): 11,474,044
• Application Number: 16/094,542
• OSTI ID: 1986712
• Resource Relation: Patent File Date: 04/21/2017
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English