Question

Typing Answer is Mandatory!

You were just hired by a plastic manufacturer. Your first project is to make a new plastic that is microwaveable. Determine if you should use an addition polymerization reaction or a condensation reaction to create this new product. Provide an explanation for your answer.

Answer 1

The formation of the repeat units for thermoplastics usually begins with the formation of small carbon-based molecules that can be combined to form monomers. The monomers, in turn, are joined together by chemical polymerization mechanisms to form polymers.

For addition reactions a special catalyst is added, frequently a peroxide, that causes one monomer to link to the next and that to the next and so on. Catalysts do not cause reactions to occur, but cause the reactions to happen more rapidly. Addition polymerization, used for polyethylene and polystyrene and polyvinyl chloride among others, creates no byproducts. The reactions can be done in the gaseous phase dispersed in liquids. The second polymerization mechanism, condensation polymerization, uses catalysts to have all monomers react with any adjacent monomer. The reaction results in two monomers forming dimers (two unit cells) plus a byproduct. Dimers can combine to form tetramers (four unit cells) and so on. For condensation polymerization the byproducts must be removed for the chemical reaction to produce useful products.

the reversible polycondensation involving the elimination of water molecule is usually conducted in bulk at relatively high temperature (180?C - 230?C) in order to remove water from the system. This allows the shift of the equilibrium to form high molecular weight polymers with high yield reaction.

so we will use condensation reaction to make microwaveable plastic.