Dehydrated castor oil (DCO) has been used as a comonomer with styrene to determine reactivity ratios. The polymerization was a free-radical process in benzene, and the product was isolated by evaporation of the reaction mixture and by two precipitations into petroleum ether from benzene. The copolymer composition was determined by a saponification procedure. DCO was found to have a high chain transfer constant and a very low reactivity ratio (estimated at 0.086) compared to styrene (11.6). It was found that copolymerization is difficult to achieve in a system where the DCO concentration in the reaction mixture was above 20 mole-%.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Cassidy et al. (1974) studied this question.