Polymer Tutorials

These tutorials cover DWSIM's polymer system end to end: the PC-SAFT equation of state for polymer solutions, molecular-weight distributions, devolatilization, and the free-radical polymerization reactor. Together they take you from a single polymer compound through a full make-and-finish flowsheet.

Tutorials

1. PC-SAFT Polymer Solutions - Add a built-in polymer, model polymer-solvent phase behaviour with PC-SAFT, and locate a cloud point where the solution demixes into a lean and a concentrated liquid.

2. Molecular-Weight Distribution - Use the Polymer Characterization tool to split a polydisperse polymer into pseudo-component cuts (Schulz-Zimm or log-normal) that reproduce its number- and weight-average molar mass.

3. Polymer Devolatilization - Strip the solvent from a polymer solution by heating it under vacuum and flashing it, leaving a concentrated melt. Uses the dedicated PC-SAFT polymer flash.

4. Polymerization Reactor - Make polystyrene in a free-radical polymerization reactor (conversion, Mn, Mw, polydispersity), then switch to a styrene/MMA copolymer and read its composition from the Mayo-Lewis model.

Prerequisites

• Completed the Intermediate Track
• Comfortable with material streams, property packages, reactors, and reading stream results
• For the reaction tutorials, a look at Reaction Systems helps

The polymer system at a glance

graph LR
    M["Monomer + initiator"] --> R["Polymerization<br/>reactor"]
    R --> S["Polymer solution<br/>(polymer + residual monomer)"]
    S --> D["Devolatilizer<br/>(heat + flash)"]
    D --> P["Polymer melt"]
    PC["PC-SAFT<br/>polymer EoS"] -.-> S
    PC -.-> D
    CH["Polymer<br/>characterization"] -.-> S

PC-SAFT provides the thermodynamics for every step; the characterization tool turns a single average molar mass into a real distribution of cuts.