Conducting polymers from hydrocarbons

Carbon blacks (c.b.s) have been known since ancient times, for preparing Indian ink. From the 1920s, c.b. has been fabricated industrially on a large scale by the thermal decomposition of hydrocarbons (natural gas) or aromatic hydrocarbons. Of the total production, 90% goes into the rubber industry, and most of this is employed for the reinforcement of tires. Production capacity is at present 7.2 million tonnes/y and the armual production is 6.1 million tormes/y [244] 95% of this global fabrication is by the furnace c.b. process [245]. The specific surface area As (nr/g) in this case covers a range from a few tens up to more than 1500. It should be mentioned that c.b. is used as a filler for conducting polymers [246]. 

The advantage of conducting the precipitation polymerization in supercritical fluids is the ease with which the unreacted monomer can be recovered from the reaction medium and the ease of recovering the produced polymer from the solvent. Free-radical polymerization in SCF hydrocarbon solvents makes use of the relationship between solvent power and SCF density to alter the threshold of precipitation of the polymer chains and also to minimize the swelling of the precipitate. This process produces polymers with controlled molecular weight with a narrow molecular weight distribution. 

Reid [35] prepared graft polymers from polysaccharides such as cellulose or starch and acrylamide with acrylic acid and a crosslinker such as MBA. The polymerization was conducted as a suspension polymerization in an aromatic hydrocarbon with a minor amount of methanol. Initiation was by conventional redox systems such as persulfate/bisulfite. Patentable features were the use of the suspension type process and the use of a crosslinker. 

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