High Temperature Semibatch Free Radical Copolymerization of Dodecyl Methacrylate and Styrene

Summary: High temperature semibatch free radical copolymerizations of dodecyl methacrylate (DMA) and styrene (ST) were carried out. A mechanistic model including depropagation and penultimate chain growth was built in Predici®. The comparison between the simulated and the experimental final polymer molecular weights indicates that the initiator efficiency decreases when DMA is used as a comonomer. Using estimated initiator efficiencies and termination coefficients, the model provides good fits to the complete set of experimental data.