Dear CHE 530 students,

I've received a few questions about #2 (emulsion polymerization). Here's how I'd start to think about it.

First I would reread the handout that shows a plot of the 3 periods of emulsion polymerization as one of the graphs on one side. (I'm choosing "periods" instead of "phases", since phases can have multiple meanings, e.g. polymer vs water, etc.)

Then I would think about the problem using the following approaches:

* Which of the 3 periods of emulsion polymerization are going on during this reaction? This will probably involve an assumption.

* What is the concentration of growing chains for use in the propagation rate, i.e. -d[M]/dt = k_p [M] [growing chain]

In a free radical polymerization we used [growing chain] = [R.]; what would be appropriate here?

* As the reaction proceeds, how does the rate change? How much energy is released per unit time?

Prof. Greenfield

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