Yanan Li

Henan Academy of Sciences, China

Co-polymerization of PLA with PBS prepared by reactive extrusion

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Biography

Ms YN Li is currently a PhD student at Institute of Chemistry, Henan Academy of Sciences. She has working experience in Henan Academy of Sciences for nearly ten years before enrolled as a postgraduate student. She participated in a number of key scientific research projects of Henan Academy of Sciences, helped enterprises to solve various technical problems as a member of the project team. She has had 6 papers published, granted 5 patents. Her PhD project is to develop new technologies of reactive extrusion used for synthesizing polyesters, in particular co-polymerizations and grafting polymerizations.?

Abstract

Reactive extrusion (REX) has been recognized as one of the top 10 emerging technologies in chemistry in the first time by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) during its 100th anniversary in 2019. REX is a green reaction process strengthening the technology that can be completely solvation free, especially in the modification and processing of natural substances. Polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most promising biodegradable polymers due to its processability, origin of renewable sources, biodegradability and mechanical behavior. PLA can be polymerized by via direct polycondensation of lactic acid or via ring-opening polymerization (ROP). The well recognized weakness of PLA is its brittleness and various co-polymerizations have been developed to overcome this issue. In this presentation, we will introduce our recent work on the polymerization, in particular co-polymerization of polyester PLA with polybutylene succinate (PBS) using REX technical.

The figure shows the schematic representation of the designed reactive extruder. The monomers can be pre-polymerized in the reactor for certain viscosity then move to the extruder through a melting pumper. There are four liquid pumpers on the extruder, which can be used to feed different initiators at different stages, crosslinking agent, and pre-polymerized monomers with low molecular weight used for co-polymerization with controlled length of block polymers. The facility also has the capability to carry out the grafting copolymerization on various filler through the side feeder.