Awareness of limited reserves of petroleum resources and green transition trends are
leading global production towards the use of biological materials, one such example being
the incorporation of bio-based monomers into polymer engineering. In my bachelor’s
degree, I investigated how the addition of dibutyl itaconate to methyl methacrylate affects
the course of polymerization, or rather, the final properties of the products. For the
synthesis, which I conducted in a semi-batch system, I used not only the mentioned
monomers but also a nitrile-based initiator and butyl acetate as a solvent. By analysing
the samples, I found that by adding a larger proportion of dibutyl itaconate, the properties
of the polymers also change proportionally. The final analyses of the patterns showed that
the higher the proportion of added dibutyl itaconate compared to methyl methacrylate,
the lower the conversions of monomers, and the average length of synthesized polymers
is shorter.
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