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US 4,232,137 AGranted
Cooling an alpha-methylstyrene polymerization mass
AssigneePhillips Petroleum Company
InventorsHoward B. Irvin, Ronnie L. Lewis, George A. Moczygemba
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AssigneePhillips Petroleum Company
InventorsHoward B. Irvin, Ronnie L. Lewis, George A. Moczygemba
Estimating the term…
An alpha-methylstyrene polymerization reaction mass is cooled by including therein a component which is readily vaporizable under the conditions of polymerization thereby to remove undesirable or excess heat, thus controlling the reaction temperature to a desired value. In one embodiment a living polymer is produced followed by addition of a second monomer to the living polymer still in solution followed by polymerization onto the living polymer, forming a living block copolymer which is coupled with a linking agent.
A method for producing a polymeric mass from an alpha-methylstyrene which comprises preparing a solution of it in an inert diluent, the inert diluent having two components other than said alpha-methyl styrene and being composed of at least one solvent of a character and present in the solution in an amount sufficient to maintain a polymer when produced in solution in the polymeric mass and a liquid component which is readily vaporizable under the desired conditions of polymerization, said component being of a character and being present in an amount such as to remove by vaporization of at least a portion thereof undesirable or excess heat from the reaction mass and then producing said mass under polymerization conditions including the vaporization of said portion of said component.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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Hydrocarbons: monomers containing a branched unsaturated aliphatic radical or a ring substituted by an alkyl radical
Block or graft polymers containing only sequences of polymers of C08C or C08F: containing sequences of polymers of conjugated dienes and of…
Macromolecular compounds obtained by reactions only involving carbon-to-carbon unsaturated bonds
Macromolecular compounds obtained otherwise than by reactions only involving unsaturated carbon-to-carbon bonds
Term ended 14 Sep 1998 (estimated)
USPTO file history isn’t available for this patent, so only indexed dates are shown.
This invention relates to a method for cooling a polymerization reaction mass. In one of its aspects it relates to the cooling of an alpha-methylstyrene polymerization reaction. In another of its aspects it relates to the production of a coupled, living block copolymer.
In one of its concepts the invention provides a method for controlling the temperature of a polymerization reaction mass, in which an alpha-methylstyrene is being polymerized to form a living polymer, by incorporating with the monomer and suitable diluent, a component which is readily vaporizable under the conditions under which the polymerization is being carried out. In another of its concepts the invention provides a method for producing such a polymer and ultimately a living block copolymer which is coupled by the said incorporation of the component which is readily vaporizable under conditions of the reaction, wherein said component is recovered for reuse.
It is well known in the art that block copolymers can be prepared by way of the "living-polymer method," also referred to as the "sequential addition method." According to one embodiment of this method, a block copolymer is prepared by first polymerizing a given monomer into a living polymer using a monofunctional anionic initiator, followed by adding a second monomer to the solution of said living polymer, the latter initiating the polymerization of the second monomer which polymerizes onto said previously formed living polymer. Finally the living block copolymer is coupled with any of the reactive multifunctional linking agents known in the art.
Example I illustrates that the presence of 9 parts of propane in the reactor recipe lowers conversion only slightly. Example II, together with the figure and material balance, illustrates a method for employing the invention on a commercial scale.
This example illustrates that the substitution of propane for part of the cyclohexane in the alpha-methylstyrene polymerization does not appreciably affect the equilibrium conversion.
The monomer, solvent and catalyst were charged to ten ounce beverage bottles according to the recipe given, cooled to 5.degree. C. and agitated in a liquid bath for the time specified. The product was coagulated with alcohol according to methods well known in the art, dried and weighed to determine conversion.