Chemistry Commons^™

Correlation Of Polymer Performance And Hansen Solubility Parameters, Daniel Jobse Mania

Master's Theses

Ready-to-use (RTU) grout is becoming more important to the finish and remodeling construction industry. Market research shows it is a fast-growing product that not only is creating its own space, but is beginning to supplant existing technology.

The original intent of this research was to investigate formulation parameters and how they affect grout performance. It was learned that particle size and oil absorption (OA) value are important filler properties that affect performance as much as adequate packing density and optimal pigment volume concentration (PVC) without going beyond critical PVC (CPVC).

Polymer architecture was also determined to be extremely important, but …

Optimizing Solvent Blends For A Quinary System, Thomas L. Hoy

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The Department of Polymer Engineering had received a grant from the Keck foundation to produce a process in which hundreds of copolymers can be formulated, synthesized, analyzed and then extrapolated to produce the optimal polymer for the desired material property. This process involves synthesizing approximately fifty polymers in a custom apparatus, none of which necessarily have the same monomer components. This leads to issue of which solvent or blend of solvents to use that would sufficiently dissolve both monomers and the resulting copolymer. If the monomers are not completely dissolved, a homogenous reaction will be impossible and if the copolymer …