Abstract
During the last few years considerable advances have been made in the theory of polymerization processes, and these have a direct bearing on the manufacture of synthetic rubbers and plastics and the properties of the various products of this type that are now handled by the rubber industry. The most important industrial process involves emulsion polymerization. This is used in the production of types, such as GR-S, Perbunan, and Neoprene, and also in the production of polyvinyl chloride. World production of these emulsion polymeric materials is in the region of hundreds of thousands of tons per annum, and the process is probably one of the more important chemical manufactures developed in the last decade. No large manufacture of synthetic rubber has been developed in Great Britain, mainly because of war-time exigencies and economic considerations, and the only significant contribution made by British chemical industry to alleviate the war-time scarcity of natural rubber was to develop a large-scale production of polyvinyl chloride to satisfy the requirements of the cable trade. There has, however, been some research activity on synthetic rubber in this country since 1935 in the laboratories of the Dyestuffs Division of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd. Activity in the main was concentrated on the diene emulsion interpolymer types and a large number of second components were examined for interpolymerization with both butadiene and chloroprene. Comparatively few interpolymerize to give rubbers with reasonably good vulcanizate properties. These have been disclosed in the patent literature. Parallel work was being carried out in the laboratories of I. G. Farbenindustrie and later in America, and the results of much of this have now appeared in the technical literature and in the accounts that are now available on German war-time activities. The general conclusions were similar.
ANALYSIS OF THE SCIENTIFIC, TECHNICAL AND PATENT LITERATURE IN THE FIELD OF CREATION OF FROST-RESISTANT POLYMERIC MATERIALS