%0 Journal Article
%T Modeling and Simulation of an Isothermal Suspension Polymerization Reactor for PMMA Production Using Python
%A Aldo Okullo
%A Noah Tibasiima
%A Joshua Barasa
%J Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science
%P 408-419
%@ 2160-0406
%D 2017
%I Scientific Research Publishing
%R 10.4236/aces.2017.74029
%X <div style=\"text-align:justify;\">
	This paper presents the modeling and simulation of a suspension polymerization
for methyl methacrylate in an isothermal reactor to produce poly methyl
methacrylate using Python 3.5. The numeral solution to the stiff ordinary differential
equations was performed by building a custom module which was
used with the inbuilt NumPy and matplotlib modules that come with the
Anaconda python distro. Python was used in order to obtain a realistic solution
that considers the gel, glass and cage effects that affect the non-linear polymerization
kinetics established in literature. The results showed that a
maximum monomer conversion of about 92.8% at a minimum batch time of
about 2.2 hours could be achieved at the specified conditions to obtain a polydisperse
polymer with an index of 27. It is further concluded that Python can
be employed to perform similar studies with equal success as any other programming
language.
</div>
%K Suspension Polymerization
%K Modeling
%K Simulation
%K Python
%U http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=79641