Modeling of Semibatch Solution Radical Copolymerization of Butyl Methacrylate and 2-Hydroxyethyl Acrylate

摘要

Nonfunctional monomer feedstocks containing alkyl meth(acrylate) components such as butyl acrylate (BA) and butyl methacrylate (BMA) are replaced or augmented with functional monomers such as 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) and 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate (HEA) to produce reactive polymer chains of lowered molar mass for application in solvent-borne automotive coatings. The introduction of such polar and functional reactants affects the radical copolymerization kinetics and introduces solvent dependencies. A series of BMA/HEA experiments are performed to determine the influence of these changing kinetic parameters under starved-feed semibatch operating conditions. A comparison with BMA/BA copolymerizations shows that the influence of hydrogen bonding is small, with the semibatch system well controlled to HEA contents of up to 50 wt%. Thus, the experiments are well represented by a comprehensive generalized copolymerization model that considers relevant methacrylate and acrylate side-reactions and uses the chain growth parameters measured in previous kinetic investigations.