poly(butyl acrylate) hydrolysis

[julia]

Hi,
We produce poly(butyl acrylate) base polymers, and I would like to know if anyone could give me a tip on the way I could find the ratio butyl acrylate vs styrene in a polymer. My idea was to do an alkaline hydrolysis of the polymer, which would lead to the transformation of the butyl acrylate in butanol, and then analyze it by GC-FID. Do you think that it would work?

Thank you for your help!

[Rafael Chust]

I personally dislike "indirect" methods, as you can always loose something in translation.

Have you consider GPC?

[Consumer Products Guy]

What about something simple: UV absorbance of the styrene portion?

[julia]

Hi,
We are working on GPC right now, but we have an issue : we have difficulties to dissolve the polymer. The columns that we have are in THF, but styrene/butyl acrylate polymer base don't dissolve well in THF. We are thinking about buing other columns that are in DMF, but it is not in the lab's budget for this year...

Thanks for your help!