Polymer solutions solvent solubility

It is reasonably easy to use Eq. 26 to determine the solubility parameter of a solvent, but since the heat of vaporization of polymers is usually not known, other methods are needed to determine the solubility parameters of polymers. There are several experimental methods, based on polymer swelling measurements or on the determination of the intrinsic viscosity of polymer solutions. Alternatively, solubility parameters can be predicted from knowledge of the chemical structure of each component. The latter method is due to Small (72) and Hoy (73), who supplied values for molar attraction constants (G) of a large number of functional groups (Table 4). The constants G are additive. With these values it is possible to estimate the solubility parameter of any polymer using Eq. 28, where p represents the density and M the molecular weight of the polymer. 

Soluble Fluorescent Polymers. Several pigment manufacturers have developed fluorescent polymers iatended to be used as a solution for apphcation to various substrates. These toners come ia both solvent soluble and alkaline water-soluble forms. 

HoUow-fiber fabrication methods can be divided into two classes (61). The most common is solution spinning, in which a 20—30% polymer solution is extmded and precipitated into a bath of a nonsolvent, generally water. Solution spinning allows fibers with the asymmetric Loeb-Soufirajan stmcture to be made. An alternative technique is melt spinning, in which a hot polymer melt is extmded from an appropriate die and is then cooled and sohdified in air or a quench tank. Melt-spun fibers are usually relatively dense and have lower fluxes than solution-spun fibers, but because the fiber can be stretched after it leaves the die, very fine fibers can be made. Melt spinning can also be used with polymers such as poly(trimethylpentene), which are not soluble in convenient solvents and are difficult to form by wet spinning. 

Spray Drying. Spray-dry encapsulation processes (Fig. 7) consist of spraying an intimate mixture of core and shell material into a heated chamber where rapid desolvation occurs to thereby produce microcapsules (24,25). The first step in such processes is to form a concentrated solution of the carrier or shell material in the solvent from which spray drying is to be done. Any water- or solvent-soluble film-forming shell material can, in principle, be used. Water-soluble polymers such as gum arable, modified starch, and hydrolyzed gelatin are used most often. Solutions of these shell materials at 50 wt % soHds have sufficiently low viscosities that they stiU can be atomized without difficulty. It is not unusual to blend gum arable and modified starch with maltodextrins, sucrose, or sorbitol. 

Soluble support-based synthetic approaches offer the advantages of both homogeneous solution-phase chemistry (high reactivity, ease of analysis) and solid-phase synthesis (large excess of reagents, simple product isolation and purification) [98,99]. As a representative example, PEG, one of the most widely used soluble polymers, has good solubility in most organic solvents (i.e., dichloromethane, acetonitrile, dimethylformamide, and toluene), but it... 

The presence of a large number of chain-ends in the fully synthesized dendrimer molecules makes them highly soluble and also readily miscible, for example with other dendrimer solutions. The solubility is controlled by the nature of the end-groups, so that dendrimers with hydrophilic groups, such as hydroxyl or carboxylic acid, at the ends of the branches are soluble in polar solvents, whereas dendrimers with hydrophobic end-groups are soluble in non-polar solvents. The density of the end-groups at the surface of the dendrimer molecule means that they have proportionately more influence on the solubility than in linear polymers. Hence a dendritic polyester has been shown to be more soluble in tetrahydrofuran than an equivalent linear polyester. 

The conformation of a polymer in solution is the consequence of a competition between solute intra- and intermolecular forces, solvent intramolecular forces, and solute-solvent intermolecular forces. Addition of a good solvent to a dry polymer causes polymer swelling and disaggregation as solvent molecules adsorb to sites which had previously been occupied by polymer intra- and intermolecular interaction. As swelling proceeds, individual chains are brought into bulk solution until an equilibrium solubility is attained. 

Essentially, extraction of an analyte from one phase into a second phase is dependent upon two main factors solubility and equilibrium. The principle by which solvent extraction is successful is that like dissolves like . To identify which solvent performs best in which system, a number of chemical properties must be considered to determine the efficiency and success of an extraction [77]. Separation of a solute from solid, liquid or gaseous sample by using a suitable solvent is reliant upon the relationship described by Nemst s distribution or partition law. The traditional distribution or partition coefficient is defined as Kn = Cs/C, where Cs is the concentration of the solute in the solid and Ci is the species concentration in the liquid. A small Kd value stands for a more powerful solvent which is more likely to accumulate the target analyte. The shape of the partition isotherm can be used to deduce the behaviour of the solute in the extracting solvent. In theory, partitioning of the analyte between polymer and solvent prevents complete extraction. However, as the quantity of extracting solvent is much larger than that of the polymeric material, and the partition coefficients usually favour the solvent, in practice at equilibrium very low levels in the polymer will result. 

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