Alcoholysis of ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer catalyzed by alkaline: A kinetic study based on in situ FTIR spectroscopy

Controlled alcoholysis of ethylene–vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA) is very important both to industry and academic research. To this end, accurate kinetic model is an important tool, but traditional methods for studying reaction kinetics involving polymers are usually laborious and time consuming due to the need of product purification. Therefore, we developed a new method to study the alcoholysis of EVA with 32 mol% ethylene content based on in situ FTIR spectroscopy. The feasibility and accuracy of this method was carefully studied. A kinetic model for predicting reaction rate was obtained using this method. The applicability of the kinetic model was further verified by performing flow alcoholysis in microflow reactor. It was found that this kinetic model is pretty accurate for conversions up to around 60 %, even at a relatively high temperature. The in situ FTIR method may also be suitable for monitoring industrial production process and other alcoholysis systems like PVA.