Emulsion polymerization locus

The initiator is present in the water phase, and this is where the initiating radicals are produced. The rate of radical production if, is typically of the order of 1013 radicals L-1 s-1. (The symbol p is often used instead of Rj in emulsion polymerization terminology.) The locus of polymerization is now of prime concern. The site of polymerization is not the monomer droplets since the initiators employed are insoluble in the organic monomer. Such initiators are referred to as oil-insoluble initiators. This situation distinguishes emulsion polymerization from suspension polymerization. Oil-soluble initiators are used in suspension polymerization and reaction occurs in the monomer droplets. The absence of polymerization in the monomer droplets in emulsion polymerization has been experimentally verified. If one halts an emulsion polymerization at an appropriate point before complete conversion is achieved, the monomer droplets can be separated and analyzed. An insignificant amount (approximately <0.1%) of polymer is found in the monomer droplets in such experiments. Polymerization takes place almost exclusively in the micelles. Monomer droplets do not compete effectively with micelles in capturing radicals produced in solution because of the much smaller total surface area of the droplets. 

The reaction described in this example is carried out in miniemulsion.Miniemulsions are dispersions of critically stabilized oil droplets with a size between 50 and 500 nm prepared by shearing a system containing oil, water,a surfactant and a hydrophobe. In contrast to the classical emulsion polymerization (see 5ect. 2.2.4.2), here the polymerization starts and proceeds directly within the preformed micellar "nanoreactors" (= monomer droplets).This means that the droplets have to become the primary locus of the nucleation of the polymer reaction. With the concept of "nanoreactors" one can take advantage of a potential thermodynamic control for the design of nanoparticles. Polymerizations in such miniemulsions, when carefully prepared, result in latex particles which have about the same size as the initial droplets.The polymerization of miniemulsions extends the possibilities of the widely applied emulsion polymerization and provides advantages with respect to copolymerization reactions of monomers with different polarity, incorporation of hydrophobic materials, or with respect to the stability of the formed latexes. 

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. 

In emulsion polymerization the compartmentalization of reaction loci and the location of monomer in polymer particles favor the growth and slow down termination events. The contribution of solution polymerization in the continuous phase is strongly restricted due to the location of monomer in the monomer droplets and/or polymer particles. This gives rise to greatly different characteristics of polymer formation in latex particles from those in bulk or solution polymerization. In emulsion polymerization, where polymer and monomer are mutually soluble, the polymerization locus is the whole particle. If the monomer and polymer are partly mutually soluble, the particle/water interfacial region is the polymerization locus. 

The emulsion polymerization system consists of three phases an aqueous phase (containing initiator, emulsifier, and some monomer), emulsified monomer droplets, the monomer-swollen micelles, and monomer-swollen particles. Water is the most important ingredient of the emulsion polymerization system. It is inert and acts as the locus of initiation (the formation of primary and oligomeric radicals) and the medium of transfer of monomer and emulsifier from monomer droplets or the monomer-swollen particle micelles to particles. An aqueous phase maintains a low viscosity and provides an efficient heat transfer. 

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] ... 

The preparation of a latex by emulsion polymerization comprises two stages (i) particle nucleation (ii) particle growth. For the latex to be monodisperse, the particle nucleation stage must be short relative to the particle growth stage. Despite many investigations, there is disagreement as to the locus of particle nucleation (i) monomer-swollen emulsifier micelles (ii) ad-... 

The locus of reaction during an emulsion polymerization is nearly exclusively within particles in which the ratio of polymer to monomer is high enough so that the reacting fluid is quite viscous. Relative to bulk polymerization, this is beyond the start of the Mgel effect and one should expect the influence of restricted diffusion of the polymer to be felt during the entire emulsion polymerization reaction. The most common approach for treating this behavior in bulk polymerization is to treat the termination rate constant, k, as a function of conversion level... 

Emulsion Polymerization in a CSTR. Emulsion polymerization is usually carried out isothermally in batch or continuous stirred tank reactors. Temperature control is much easier than for bulk or solution polymerization because the small (. 5 Jim) polymer particles, which are the locus of reaction, are suspended in a continuous aqueous medium as shown in Figure 5. This complex, multiphase reactor also shows multiple steady states under isothermal conditions. Gerrens and coworkers at BASF seem to be the first to report these phenomena both computationally and experimentally. Figure 6 (taken from ref. (253)) plots the autocatalytic behavior of the reaction rate for styrene polymerization vs. monomer conversion in the reactor. The intersection... 

The preceding discussion has led us to the conclusion that the surface is the only locus of polymerization which needs to be considered in the heterogeneous polymerization of acrylonitrile. Radicals arrive at the surface at a rate determined by the decomposition of the initiator and efficiency of initiation. Propagation occurs on the surface at a rate determined by the activity of monomer at the surface. By analogy with emulsion polymerization, where monomer diffuses into the particles rapidly enough to maintain near equilibrium activity (14), we assume that the activity of the monomer adsorbed on the particle surface is approximately equal to the mole fraction in solution. The propagation rate constant is presumably influenced somewhat by the presence of the solid surface. 

The MC method is a powerful technique for investigating complicated phenomena that are difficult to solve by the conventional differential equation approach. In the MC approach, all one needs are the individual probabilities of various kinetic events. It is easy to understand the advantages of applying the MC method to emulsion polymerization if we note that it is possible to simulate the formation processes of all polymer molecules in each polymer particle directly because the volume of the reaction locus is very small. One... 

The mechanism of emulsion polymerization ensures that the polymer concentration at the polymerization locus is semidilute or concentrated, which results in a greater probability of branch chain formation [299, 300]. This effect produces unique average branching densities and unique distributions of branching densities, that are significantly different from corresponding bulk polymerization [266,301]. 

The MC simulation method is particularly suitable for investigating emulsion polymerization that involves various simultaneous kinetic events with a very small locus of polymerization. The MC simulation method will become a standard mathematical tool for the analysis of complex reaction kinetics, both for linear and nonlinear emulsion (co)polymerization. 

Polymerizations of the monomer emulsions were carried out with oil-soluble initiators. Oil-soluble initiators have often been employed in emulsion polymerization recipes and are generally used in suspension polymerization. Whereas in the latter case the initiation naturally takes place in the monomer droplets, the locus of initiation and growth of particles in emulsion polymerization with oil-soluble initiators has been open to some doubt. However, the fact that the particle size and size distribution is not very different from the results with water-soluble initiators and that the particles are generally much smaller than the droplets in the monomer emulsions indicates that with... 

In emulsion polymerization a single polymer particle can be regarded as a locus of bulk polymerization with intermittent initiation. A decrease in termination rate constant, which is observed in bulk polymerization, should, therefore, also occur in a single polymer particle and must be taken into account in model simulation of emulsion polymerization. However, since the polymer particles from the very beginning of the reaction contain a certain percentage of polymer, typically 20-40%, then the termination rate constant is always smaller in the beginning of emulsion polymerization than in the similar homogeneous bulk... 

Patsiga et al. (I9W) and Giskehaug (I96S) carried out tbe seeded emulsion polymerizations of vinyl acetate and of vinyl chloride, respectively, and found that in both systems the rate of polymerization was proportional only to the 0.15-0.20 power of the number of polymer particles. From this finding they concluded that the main locus of the emulsion polymerization of water oluble monomers must be in the water fJiase. This conclusion seems reasonable because the solubilities of these monomers are about 100... 

Another problem involves the classification of these metal-based heterogeneous systems into suspension, dispersion, and emulsion polymerizations similarly to conventional systems. This is due to not only a lack of detailed analysis of reaction mechanisms and particle sizes but also fundamental differences in several aspects such as the locus of initiation and the molecular weight of polymers in comparison with the conventional counterparts. The terms suspension and emulsion will be used in the following sections for simple classification but are not based on the strict definition for conventional free radical systems. 

Before describing a qualitative picture of emulsion polymerization a note on monomer solubility and type of surface active agents is in order. Monomers for emulsion polymerization should be nearly insoluble in the dispersing medium but not completely insoluble. The solubility must be less than about 0.004 mol/L, as otherwise the aqueous phase will become a major locus of polymerization and the system will then not be typical emulsion polymerization. At the same time the monomer must be slightly soluble as this will allow the transport of monomer from the emulsified monomer reservoirs to the reaction loci (see later). 

The influence of the emulsifier (SHS) concentration on Np is more pronounced in the conventional emulsion polymerization system (Rp°c[SHS]y, y= 0.68) than in mini-emulsion polymerization (y=0.25). This result is caused by the different particle formation mechanism. While homogeneous nucleation is predominant in the conventional emulsion polymerization, monomer droplets become the main locus of particle nucleation in mini-emulsion polymerization. In the latter polymerization system, most of the emulsifier molecules are adsorbed on the monomer droplet surface and, consequently, a dense droplet surface structure forms. The probability of absorption of oligomeric radicals generated in the continuous phase by the emulsifier-saturated surface of minidroplets is low as is also the particle formation rate. 

In conventional emulsion polymerization, the disappearance of the VAc/BA droplets at ca. 25% conversion results from the transfer of monomer from monomer droplets to the locus of polymerization (monomer-swollen polymer particles). The presence of HD in the minidroplets reduces the free energy of mixing of the constituent monomers in the droplets. Therefore, the difference in the free energy of mixing between the monomer and polymer (particles) in mini-emulsion copolymerization is less than that in conventional emulsion polymerization. As a consequence, a smaller flux of monomer from the monomer droplets to polymer particles is achieved during mini-emulsion polymerization. In addition, HD cannot be transported from the droplets to particles because of its extremely low water solubility. Thus, the HD concentration in the droplets is greater than that in the particles, and monomer is retained in the droplets to minimize the HD concentration gradient. 

---