0000000000594355
AUTHOR
P. Schützeichel
Continuous fractionation and solution properties of PIB. I. Search for the best mixed solvent and first results of the continuous polymer fractionation
To adopt a recently developed method for large scale fractionation (CPF = continuous polymer fractionation, a special kind of counter current extraction) to polyisobutylene (PIB), a systematic search for the best mixed solvent was performed. For this purpose, the essential parts of the phase diagrams solvent/nonsolvent/PIB were determined for 21 mixed solvents by cloud-point measurements; with eight systems of special interest, the molecular weight distributions of the polymers contained in the coexisting phases were also studied. On the basis of these experiments and of considerations concerning additional criteria for the performance of the continuous counter current extraction, the mixed…
Continuous fractionation and solution properties of PIB. II. CPF optimization
The quality of polymer fractionation depends on the choice of the mixed solvent as well as on the particular conditions of operating the continuous countercurrent extraction. With a polyisobutylene (PIB) sample of medium molecular weight Mw = 98,400 g/mol and U = (Mw/Mn) − 1 = 1.4 plus the mixed solvents toluene/2-butanone (TOL/MEK) and n-heptane/2-butanone (HEP/MEK) (both giving comparably good fractionation in equilibrium experiments), possible ways to optimize the CPF were tested. The mixed solvent HEP/MEK turns out to be superior to TOL/MEK for kinetic reasons. Due to the larger gap between its density and that of the pure polymer, the coexisting phases can still move through the column…