Monitoring the effect of initiator, stabilizer, and water/alcohol medium on the conversion of synthesized polystyrene by dispersion polymerization method by Design Expert software

In the present work, the effect of initiator and stabilizer concentration as well as solvent and reactor temperature on polystyrene conversion, synthesized by dispersion polymerization method has been investigated. Design expert software is used to control these parameters and design the experiment and analyze the results. To perform this reaction, AIBN at concentrations of 0.5, 1, and 1.5 wt% was used as initiator, and PVP-K30 at concentrations of 0.25, 0.5, and 0.75 wt% was used as stabilizer in medium water and ethanol environment in proportions of 25, 50 and 75 v% at temperatures of 50, 60 and 70 degrees. Due to the multiplicity of effective parameters in the polymerization process, 29 different experiments were predicted by Design Expert, resulting in the synthesis of 29 different samples with different conversion percentages. By analyzing the samples, the conversion of these samples was measured, and the conversion percentage ranged from 0.13 to 89.68 percent. The highest conversion percentage was achieved when the ratio of water and alcohol was 25% and the initiator rate was 1%, the stabilizer rate was 0.5% and the reaction temperature was 70 °C.