Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 15, 2025
Assembly and Characterization of Polyelectrolyte Complex Micelles
Published on: March 2, 2020
Process Characterization of Polyvinyl Acetate Emulsions Applying Inline Photon Density Wave Spectroscopy at High
Stephanie Schlappa1, Lee Josephine Brenker1, Lena Bressel1
1Department of Physical Chemistry, innoFSPEC, University of Potsdam, Am Muehlenberg 3, 14476 Potsdam, Germany.
Abstract:
The high solids semicontinuous emulsion polymerization of polyvinyl acetate using poly (vinyl alcohol-co-vinyl acetate) as protective colloid is investigated by optical spectroscopy. The suitability of Photon Density Wave (PDW) spectroscopy as inline Process Analytical Technology (PAT) for emulsion polymerization processes at high solid contents (>40% (w/w)) is studied and evaluated. Inline data on absorption and scattering in the dispersion is obtained in real-time. The radical polymerization of vinyl acetate to polyvinyl acetate using ascorbic acid and sodium persulfate as redox initiator system and poly (vinyl alcohol-co-vinyl acetate) as protective colloid is investigated. Starved-feed radical emulsion polymerization yielded particle sizes in the nanometer size regime. PDW spectroscopy is used to monitor the progress of polymerization by studying the absorption and scattering properties during the synthesis of dispersions with increasing monomer amount and correspondingly decreasing feed rate of protective colloid. Results are compared to particle sizes determined with offline dynamic light scattering (DLS) and static light scattering (SLS) during the synthesis.
