Process for manufacturing polyarylene sulfide

Abstract

Disclosed is a process for manufacturing polyarylene sulfide comprising pre-polymerizing a dihalogeno-aromatic compound with a liquid or gaseous sulfur compound in the presence of a lithium compound in an aprotic organic solvent followed by further polymerizing the resulting pre-polymerized system; which is characterized in that sufficient water is added to the pre-polymerized solution (I) to separate it into a tick polymer phase and a solvent phase, then a solvent is added to the thus-separated, thick polymer phase and the resulting polymer phase is further polymerized, for efficiently manufacturing high-purity polyarylene sulfide. The process does not require any complicated steps of washing the polymer with a multi-stage washing system and is free from the increase in the production costs of the polymer. In the process, the lithium salt used can be recovered efficiently.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.