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Modeling of Semibatch Solution Radical Copolymerization of Butyl Methacrylate and 2‐Hydroxyethyl Acrylate
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Modeling of Semibatch Solution Radical Copolymerization of Butyl Methacrylate and 2‐Hydroxyethyl Acrylate

Jan E. S. Schier, Min Zhang, Michael C. Grady and Robin A. Hutchinson
Macromolecular reaction engineering, v 12(4)
Aug 2018
url
https://doi.org/10.1002/mren.201800008View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

hydrogen‐bonding kinetics (polymn) radical copolymerization semibatch simulation
Nonfunctional monomer feedstocks containing alkyl meth(acrylate) components such as butyl acrylate (BA) and butyl methacrylate (BMA) are replaced or augmented with functional monomers such as 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) and 2‐hydroxyethyl acrylate (HEA) to produce reactive polymer chains of lowered molar mass for application in solvent‐borne automotive coatings. The introduction of such polar and functional reactants affects the radical copolymerization kinetics and introduces solvent dependencies. A series of BMA/HEA experiments are performed to determine the influence of these changing kinetic parameters under starved‐feed semibatch operating conditions. A comparison with BMA/BA copolymerizations shows that the influence of hydrogen bonding is small, with the semibatch system well controlled to HEA contents of up to 50 wt%. Thus, the experiments are well represented by a comprehensive generalized copolymerization model that considers relevant methacrylate and acrylate side‐reactions and uses the chain growth parameters measured in previous kinetic investigations. The influence of hydroxyl functional groups on radical kinetics is studied at higher temperature conditions typically used in industry. While the copolymerization of 2‐hydroxyethyl acrylate with butyl methacrylate is well represented by a standard acrylate‐methacrylate representation, polarity does influence both relative monomer consumption rates and solvent selection.

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Collaboration types
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Engineering, Chemical
Polymer Science
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