Purification of styrene for anionic polymerization

✍ Scribed by Duane B. Priddy; Michael Pirc

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 298 KB
• Volume: 40
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-8995
• DOI: 10.1002/app.1990.070400104

✦ Synopsis

Anionic polymerization of styrene in CSTR processes demands monomers which are highly pure. Lithium aluminum hydride (LAH) is a highly reactive material which reacts with the impurities in styrene that interfere with anionic polymerization. The LAH/impurity reaction products are not compatible with anionic polymerization and therefore must be isolated or removed from the styrene before polymerization. This problem is mwt readily solved by supporting the LAH on ion exchange resin beads such that the impurity reaction products are chemically bound to the support. We have demonstrated the preparation of > 50 mol of polystyrene/mol of n-butyl lithium by passing the polymerization feed through a column filled with LAH/ion exchange resin. This represents > 10-fold improvement in yield (based on n-butyl lithium) over previously described feed purification techniques.