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Converting waste plastic containing acrylonitrile into a water‐absorbent polymer
Author(s) -
Inagaki Yasuhito
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.27717
Subject(s) - acrylonitrile , sulfuric acid , chemical modification , styrene , materials science , polymer , hydrolysis , polymer chemistry , chemical engineering , chemistry , organic chemistry , copolymer , composite material , engineering
Waste ABS (acrylonitrile‐butadiene‐styrene) resin and waste AS (acrylonitrile‐styrene) resin used for videocassettes were converted into a water‐absorbent polymer. Concretely, these waste resins containing acrylonitrile were made to react with heated high‐concentration sulfuric acid. In this chemical modification, the acrylonitrile portion and the styrene portion in the AS resin were hydrolyzed and sulfonated, respectively. We studied the relationship between the water absorbency of the modified waste AS and the conditions of chemical modification. It was confirmed that the water absorbency greatly depends on the degree of hydrolysis of the acrylonitrile portion in the waste AS resin. We have succeeded in developing a water‐absorbent polymer, which can absorb water of about 800 times of its own weight by the chemical modification of the waste AS resin. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008.