An experimental study on saturation swelling of styrene–acryronitrile copolymer particles with styrene and acrylonitrile monomers

Abstract The saturation swelling behavior of styrene and acrylonitrile (SAN) copolymer particles with a styrene (St) and acrylonitrile (AN) comonomer mixture was investigated experimentally. The effects of the copolymer composition and the compositional inhomogeneity in SAN Copolymer particles on their swelling behavior were examined. The experimental results show that both the copolymer composition and the compositional inhomogeneity in SAN copolymer particles have little or no influence on the swellability of SAN copolymer particles with a St and AN comonomer mixture, as long as the weight fraction of AN monomer units in SAN copolymer particles is less than a certain value between 0.6 and 0.8. With increasing AN content in the copolymer particles beyond this value, however, the swellability of SAN copolymer particles gradually decreases. Semiempirical equations are proposed, which correlate the saturation concentration of each monomer in SAN copolymer particles as a function of the comonomer composition in the monomer droplets and the overall copolymer composition in SAN copolymer particles. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.