Polymerization of Three-Arm Poly (e-Caprolactone) Via Reactive Extrusion

In recent years, humanity has turned an increasing amount of attention toward eco-friendlier products, specifically plastics. This comes from growing concerns of carbon emissions and general pollution, as plastic can take up to 450 years to decompose naturally. One of these eco-friendly, biodegradable plastics is Polycaprolactone (PCL), which finds most of its uses in the production of polyurethanes, such as varnishes, coatings, and adhesives. It is prepared by ring opening polymerization of ε-caprolactone using a catalyst. PCL is currently made in a batch process, which is costly to producers, as it incurs wasted time and cost with every batch made. The focus of this research is the process of synthesizing Poly (e-Caprolactone) via reactive extrusion. The reason for this is that reactive extrusion is a scalable, continuous process, and can be adapted to all process models, thus having the potential to shorten production times and quality of material for companies of all size. In addition, the constant high temperature profile of an extruder has the potential to improve the mechanical properties of PCL by increasing the molecular weight of the polymer. The extrusion will take place in a Leistritz 27mm Co-Rotating Extruder, where products will be subject to three methods of identification. A differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) will determine the temperature of glass transition and melt.