Yujie Zhang1, Marc A. Dubé1,*, Eduardo Vivaldo-Lima2
Journal of Renewable Materials, Vol.3, No.4, pp. 318-326, 2015, DOI:10.7569/JRM.2015.634115
Abstract Renewable monomers containing allylic C-H bonds in their structure are prone to degradative chain
transfer in free-radical polymerization, which will dramatically decrease the polymerization rate. In order
to understand this mechanism, a kinetic model incorporating a degradative chain transfer mechanism for
the free-radical copolymerization of d-limonene (LIM) and n-butyl methacrylate (BMA) was developed
using PREDICI. Model predictions offered insight on how degradative chain transfer reactions affect
conversion, copolymer composition and molecular weight in the polymerization. Experimental data from
copolymerizations at monomer feed compositions (LIM/BMA, mol/mol) of 10/90, 20/80 and 30/70 were
compared to the model’s predictions. More >