Daicel Chemical Industries, Ltd.

Jun Watanabe

Takuzo Aida

Shigeyuki Yoshida

A process for the continuous production of an &#x3b5;-caprolactone polymer characterized by including heating an &#x3b5;-caprolactone under reduced pressure or in an inert gas stream to volatilize the unreacted &#x3b5;-caprolactone from the polymer and cooling the vapor phase part containing the matter volatilized to thereby recover the unreacted &#x3b5;-caprolactone, wherein the amount of the &#x3b5;-caprolactone to be recovered is regulated to larger than 5 times by weight the amount of caprolactone dimer.

Process for continuously producing &#x3b5;-caprolactone polymer

The present invention uses a reactor that combines devices having a special portion structure to solve the difficulty of uniform blending due to the reactants becoming highly viscous, the difficulty of heat removal, and the increase in pressure loss, thus leading to continuous production of a polyester-based polymer stably having excellent quality.

Process of continuously producing polyester polymer

The invention provides methods for the preparation of polyester block copolymers, by reacting crystalline aromatic polyesters with lactones and/or epoxides. By using a slight excess of lactone in the reaction, and a subsequent solid-phase polycondensation reaction, the method generates high-molecular weight block copolymers of low crystallinity. Methods are also provided for generating polyester block copolymers by melt-mixing or kneading polyester block copolymers with epoxides in the solid phase.

Preparing polyester block copolymer with excess unreacted lactones to be removed

The present invention relates to a method for preparing lactone polymers, carbonate polymers, lactone-carbonate block copolymers and lactone-arbonate random copolymers via a ring-opening addition reaction of a lactone monomer, a cyclic carbonate monomer or a mixture thereof using an initiator and in the presence of a specific titanium-type Lewis acid catalyst. The resulting polymers have a molecular weight distribution (Mw/Mn) approximately equal to 1 or a extremely high purity of single-structure components. The polymer molecules range in an oligomer region to a molecular weight of approximately 200,000. The present invention also relates to a method for preparing lactone polymers, carbonate polymers and lactone-carbonate copolymers having a narrow molecular weight distribution and which can be obtained via a continuous polymerisation of a lactone monomer and/or a cyclic carbonate monomer using an initiator in an extruder in the presence of a specific titanium-type Lewis acid catalyst or an aluminium-type Lewis acid catalyst. The present invention also relates to these resulting polymers.

Processes for the preparation of a monodisperse polymers, processes for the continuous polymerization of cyclic monomers, and polymers prepared thereby

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Ohtake, Japan

Jun Watanabe