• Polymer(Korea)
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.121-127
• /
• 2004

The instantaneous removal of ethylene glycol is very important fur obtaining high molecular weight polymer because of the reversibility of the polycondensation reaction of poly(ethylene naphthalate)(PEN). In this study, we investigated the mass transfer phenomena in the thin film of PEN oligomer where the polycondensation reaction took place at 280$^{\circ}C$ and under 0.1mmHg. In case of less than 0.025cm film thickness the mass transfer resistance through the thin film of the polymer melt was not so high that the overall reaction rate was governed only by the polycondenstion reaction. Both the mass transfer model and the diffusion model predicted the experimenatal data well but the diffusion model showed faster reaction rate in the low molecular weight range than the mass transfer model . It was estimated from the two models that the diffusivity was 4.7${\times}$10$\^$-6/$\textrm{cm}^2$/sec and the mass transfer coefficient was 1.4 ${\times}$10$\^$-4/cm/sec both of which were smaller than In case of poly(ethylene terephthalate).