Emulsion polymerization homogeneous

Fluid-fluid systems are widely used in chemical, petroleum, pharmaceutical, hydrometaflurgical, and food industries. Commercially important examples of gas-liquid mass transfer with or without reaction include gas purification, oxidation, halogenations, hydrogenation, and hydroformylation to name but a few. Important liquid-liquid reactions include nitration, phase transfer catalysis (PTC), cyclization, emulsion polymerization, homogenous catalyst screening, enzymatic reactions, extraction, precipitation, crystallization, and cell separation. 

Heterogeneous polymerization, especially emulsion polymerization, provides an effective way of synthesizing nanoparticles with various architectures and forms. In the case of an emulsion polymerization, homogeneous and micellar nucleations are the main mechanisms for particle formation. In the presence of magnetic nanoparticles dispersed in the aqueous phase, particles surface can be an additional site for nucle-ation. Thus, the control of the morphology of the composite nanoparticles can become complicated due to the competition among these nucleation mechanisms. 

This paper presents the physical mechanism and the structure of a comprehensive dynamic Emulsion Polymerization Model (EPM). EPM combines the theory of coagulative nucleation of homogeneously nucleated precursors with detailed species material and energy balances to calculate the time evolution of the concentration, size, and colloidal characteristics of latex particles, the monomer conversions, the copolymer composition, and molecular weight in an emulsion system. The capabilities of EPM are demonstrated by comparisons of its predictions with experimental data from the literature covering styrene and styrene/methyl methacrylate polymerizations. EPM can successfully simulate continuous and batch reactors over a wide range of initiator and added surfactant concentrations. 

Vinyl ethers constitute a third class of monomers which have been cationically polymerized in C02. While fluorinated vinyl ether monomers such as those described in Sect. 2.1.2 can be polymerized homogeneously in C02 because of the high solubility of the resulting amorphous fluoropolymers, the polymerization of hydrocarbon vinyl ethers in C02 results in the formation of C02-insoluble polymers which precipitate from the reaction medium. The work in this area reported to date in the literature includes precipitation polymerizations and does not yet include the use of stabilizing moieties such as those described in the earlier sections on dispersion and emulsion polymerizations (Sect. 3). 

Dispersion polymerization involves an initially homogeneous system of monomer, organic solvent, initiator, and particle stabilizer (usually uncharged polymers such as poly(A-vinyl-pyrrolidinone) and hydroxypropyl cellulose). The system becomes heterogeneous on polymerization because the polymer is insoluble in the solvent. Polymer particles are stabilized by adsorption of the particle stabilizer [Yasuda et al., 2001], Polymerization proceeds in the polymer particles as they absorb monomer from the continuous phase. Dispersion polymerization usually yields polymer particles with sizes in between those obtained by emulsion and suspension polymerizations—about 1-10 pm in diameter. For the larger particle sizes, the reaction characteristics are the same as in suspension polymerization. For the smallest particle sizes, suspension polymerization may exhibit the compartmentalized kinetics of emulsion polymerization. 

The heat of an emulsion polymerization is the same as that for the corresponding bulk or solution polymerization, since AH is essentially the enthalpy change of the propagation step. Thus, the heats of emulsion polymerization for acrylic acid, methyl acrylate, and methyl methacrylate are —67, —77, and —58 kJ mol-1, respectively [McCurdy and Laidler, 1964], in excellent agreement with the AH values for the corresponding homogeneous polymerizations (Table 3-14). 

What are the characteristic overall features that distinguish emulsion polymerization from homogeneous polymerization Compare the two with regard to the heat of polymerization and the effect of temperature on the polymerization rate. 

Suspension polymerization may be the most important particle-forming polymerization from an industrial viewpoint. The system is very simple, composed of monomer, initiator, stabilizer, and medium (water in most cases). The monomer droplets with dissolving initiator are dispersed in water and the stabilizer exists at the interface. But suspension polymerization is regarded as a kind of homogeneous polymerization because the polymerization occurs only in monomer droplets and water does not affect the polymerization. Water contributes only to dividing the polymerization locus into small droplets and absorbing the heat evolved by polymerization. On the contrary, in emulsion polymerization, which is another type of polymerization performed in water and as practically important as suspension polymerization, water affects the polymerization significantly. In this section, emulsion polymerization is first discussed, and then some modified emulsion polymerizations such as soap-free emulsion polymerization and micro and mini emulsion polymerizations are described. 

Emulsifier is not a necessary component for emulsion polymerization if ihe following conditions are satisfied The particles are formed by homogeneous nucleation mechanism, and the particles are stabilized by factor(s) olher than emulsifier. As to the latter, the sulfate end group that is the residue of persulfate initiator serves for stabilization of dispersion via interparticle electrorepulsive force (20). When the stabilization mechanism works well, a small number of particles grow during polymerization without aggregation, keeping the size distribution narrow. Finally stable, monodisperse, anionic particles are obtained. 

Such a mechanism could also explain the apparent induction period found at the beginning of the polymerizations. With very small particles and large chain transfer, the polymerization could be acting as if it were in a homogeneous medium. This produces very low rates compared with a standard emulsion polymerization. As particle size increases, the rate rises because chain-transferred monomers would not diffuse into the aqueous phase. 

Grafting by chain transfer initiation has been carried out not only in homogenous medium but also by emulsion polymerization techniques, where the monomer and the catalyst are added to a latex containing the original backbone polymer (99). The efficiency of grafting increases with an increase of temperature of polymerization and with an increase of initiator concentration (generally potassium persulfate) these results indicate not only that the chain transfer reaction has a higher activation... 

HUFT homogeneous nucleation model of emulsion polymerization I initiator... 

Thus in the emulsifier-free emulsion copolymerization the emulsifier (graft copolymer, etc.) is formed by copolymerization of hydrophobic with hydrophilic monomers in the aqueous phase. The ffee-emulsifier emulsion polymerization and copolymerization of hydrophilic (amphiphilic) macromonomer and hydro-phobic comonomer (such as styrene) proceeds by the homogeneous nucleation mechanism (see Scheme 1). Here the primary particles are formed by precipitation of oligomer radicals above a certain critical chain length. Such primary particles are colloidally unstable, undergoing coagulation with other primary polymer particles or, later, with premature polymer particles and polymerize very slowly. 

Microemulsion polymerizations follow a different mechanism from the conventional emulsion polymerizations. The most probable locus of particle nucle-ation was suggested to be the microemulsion monomer droplets [27], although homogeneous nucleation was not completely ruled out. The particle generation rate in microemulsion polymerization is given by an expression similar to Eq. (21), which was used for the miniemulsion polymerization of styrene [28] ... 

In 1952 W. J. Priest, in an important paper, laid out all of the basic qualitative features of the theory of homogeneous nucleation in emulsion polymerization as it is known today (12). This was based upon his studies of particle size distributions in vinyl acetate polymerization initiated by potassium persulfate (K2S20g) in the presence of varying amounts of different stabilizers and inhibitors at several temperatures. Priest proposed that (1) "polymerization in solution is the initial process" ... 

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