Division of a polyarylene ether solution

A process for producing polyarylene ether beads from a polyarylene ether solution, comprising:

• i) dividing the polyarylene ether solution into droplets;
• and
• ii) transferring the droplets into a precipitation bath to form polyarylene ether beads in the precipitation bath which
• (A) comprises an aprotic solvent (component (1)) and a protic solvent (component (2)), and
• (B) has a temperature of 0° C. to Tc, where the critical temperature Tc in [° C.] is determined by the numerical equation Tc=(99−c)/0.61 in which c is the concentration of component (1) in the precipitation bath in [% by weight],
• wherein the percentages by weight are each based on the sum of the percentages by weight of component (1) and of component (2) in the precipitation bath,
• wherein the precipitation bath comprises water or alcohol as component (2),
• the polyarylene ether solution has a concentration of 5 to 50% by weight of polyarylene ether in the aprotic solvent, where the percentages by weight are based on the sum of the percentages by weight of the polyarylene ether and the aprotic solvent,
• the polyarylene ether solution on division has a temperature of 15 to 250° C.,
• the aprotic solvent is selected from the group consisting of dimethyl sulfoxide, dimethylformamide, sulfolane, diphenyl sulfone, 1,2-dichlorobenzene, hexamethylphosphoramide and mixtures thereof, and
• wherein, in the polyarylene ether beads formed from the precipitation bath in (ii), a content of particles having a particle size of less than or equal to 1000 μm is less than 8.15% by weight.