Miniemulsion polymerization of styrene. I. Preparation by redox initiator and new agitation mixer

Miniemulsion polymerization is usually conducted by a two-stage process, miniemulsion and polymerization, where the reactants are first processed using a high shearing machine, then transferred to a reactor to polymerize with magnetic stirring. However, the particles size distributions obtained usually are broad and skewed to small sizes owing to micelle and homogeneous nucleation in the aqueous solution. In this study, a saw-toothed blade mixer was successfully used for miniemulsion polymerization with a rotating rate over 500 rpm. The addition sequence of the components also affected the miniemulsion process in this system. The best result was obtained when the surfactant and cetyl alcohol were first dissolved in water and then the styrene was mixed in. Furthermore, a fast dissociated redox initiator system (cumene hydroperoxide/Fe²⁺/ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid-disodium salt/sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate) was used to prepare miniemulsion polymer and monodisperse polystyrene. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.