New Insight in Initiating Mechanism of Anionic BulkPolymerization of Styrene at High Temperature (1)

Aiming at solving the several queries in the classic theory of the anionic polymerization, with the help of a selfinvented device containing a spiral tubular reactor, the kinetics of the anionic bulk polymerization of styrene was investigated. Results showed that the polymerizations followed the classic theory of the anionic polymerization before 4% of the conversion. After that, however, there would appear a stationaryconversion platform and then a significant increase in polymerization rate. In order to explain the experimental results, a kinetics equation of the anionic polymerization was derived based on a hypothesis, in which polymerized molecular chains initiated by the active species in the initiator would never aggregate again to maintain the balance between aggregated initiators and active species according to the classic theory. In the light of the kinetics equation, the simulation results based on the experiments implied that there might exist an aggregation process and then a dissociation of aggregated initiator during the anionic polymerization.