Prediction of Flory–Huggins interaction parameters from intrinsic viscosities

Previous articles from this laboratory have described a model for predicting the second virial coefficient of a polymer solution given the polymer molecular weight and its intrinsic viscosity in the particular solvent. The same theory is used in this report to calculate values of the Flory–Huggins interaction parameter χ. The method is different in that χ is obtained through manipulation of simulated exprimental data in exactly the same way as in an actual experiment. Agreement between estimated χ values and those obtained at infinite dilutions from membrane osmometry or light scattering is within 2%, on the average. The model accounts for the molecular weight dependence of χ.