You will find some data on:

María Teresa García, Ignacio Gracia, Gema Duque, Antonio de Lucas, Juan Francisco Rodríguez  paper: "Study of the solubility and stability of polystyrene wastes in a dissolution recycling process", Waste Management 29 (2009) 1814–1818).

Good luck!

You will find some data on:

María Teresa García, Ignacio Gracia, Gema Duque, Antonio de Lucas, Juan Francisco Rodríguez  paper: "Study of the solubility and stability of polystyrene wastes in a dissolution recycling process", Waste Management 29 (2009) 1814–1818).

Good luck!

Aromatic HC's such as benzene, toluene also dissolve PS. 

THF

I have used dichloroethane to very good effect (only because it was near at hand); I would expect that most chlorinated solvents would be very effective.

I have ussed  THF

In the polymer chemistry practical, which I taught long time ago in England, the students carry out solution polymerization of styrene in toluene. The polystyrene remains dissolved in toluene until a nonsolvent (such as methanol) is added in excess in order to precipitate the polymer.

thanks for all

maybe I answered so late but you can dissolve any polymer in correspond monomer solvent. 

it is a role: like dissolved like 

cheers :)

you can dissolve polystyrene in toluene or benzene or xylene

Polystyrene is dissolved in acetone, toluene and et.c.

Toluene is good.  

Yes Toluene es good.

you can dissolve it in benzene or toluene

It depends on how much the polymer is branched... but in a normal case:

https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/content/dam/sigma-aldrich/docs/Aldrich/General_Information/polymer_solutions.pdf

--> "Benzene, chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons, methyl ethyl ketone, ethyl acetate"

Maybe the keyword "hanson parameter" will help.. something like this: http://www.chem.pku.edu.cn/page/liangdh/data/SOLVENT%20SELECTION%20BASED%20ON%20HANSON%20SOLUBILITY%20PARAMETERS.pdf

ps: everything is possible at room temperature, if your solvent is good enough

I glanced at the representative papers from the your department & Institution,  so the reagents suggested by others are applicable. I do not know the MW of coffee cups ie

"Styrofoam"  but they dissolve quite well in gasoline, which is probably quite cost effective.

chloroform is a good solvent. I think that mw 350000 is soluble in choloroform as PS at different molecular weight is used as standard in GPC. A temperature close to room temperature is ok.

http://depts.washington.edu/chem/facilserv/lecturedemo/Polystyrene-UWDept.ofChemsitry.html

does cholro benzene dissolve poly polystyrene beads of size 20 nm?

try with toluene

Dear Sir,

please try Acetone is good solvent for polystyrene. Also Chloroform, benzene and toluene  are good solvent.

PS is soluble in THF, DMF and Toluene and EPS(expanded polystyrene/styrofoam) is soluble in DCM and DCE.

I always use acetone

For the room temperature solubility of polystyrene, THF could one of the best solvent. Please try THF.

does this method also suitable for Polystyrene sulfonate MW 75000? i looking for solvent for my PSS solution too. Thanks

I'm I usually use THF

Terrahydrofuran , OR toluene

or (Terrahydrofuran + toluene) with different ratio

It also depends on for what you want to use it and how much you want to dissolve.

For GPC PS dissolves in THF, toluene and TCB, and if you will perform GPC, it would be best if you already have it dissolved in the same solvent.

remember to avoid sonication since it may break (cleave chains, affect MW).

From 10.1002/047084289X.rn00340

Solubility:

soluble in most organic solvents (ethyl acetate,

dichloromethane, DMF, DMSO, THF, and toluene). Insoluble

in water, low molecular weight alcohols, diethyl ether, and hex-

anes.

Please try first;

DMF %10

Toluene %90

if it not work then try:

o-Diklorobenzene 57%

Toluene 43%

THF is the best solvent

Tetrahydrofuran is a good solvent for polystyrene, even for room temerpature dissolution.

THF is the perfect one for many reasons such as, it is esay to dissoleve PS and evapurate.

Best solvents for polystyrene:

Soluble in most organic solvents,

Toluene works well at room temperature.

in which form should we purchase polystyrene for experimental work?

Do you have experience in solvent mixture (Ethylene acetate, cychloheptane and methyl cyclohexane)? How rate between them to get best solvent for Chloroprene rubber?

Thanks

Acetone

Styrofoam dissolves in acetone in a similar way to how sugar dissolves in water. It is a physical rather than a chemical reaction. The air in the foam leaves, and because Styrofoam consists mainly of air, when it dissolves in acetone it completely loses its structure. The acetone splits up the long chain of molecules, and the air disappears, causing the volume to shrink radically.

The Styrofoam does not completely disappear, even though it looks like it has. Rather, the polystyrene molecules are actually present in the acetone solution. The reaction between Styrofoam and acetone shows how soluble this plastic is in an organic solvent and how much air is in Styrofoam. If you do not have acetone, you can use gasoline or just about any other organic solvent to easily dissolve Styrofoam.

Try the website of Prof Steven Abbott:

https://www.stevenabbott.co.uk/practical-solubility/solvent-blends.php

Dear Mohammad, thanks for your reply!

Indeed that is probably a good combination. I don't need a good solvent for PS at the moment, but I stumbled across this question by accident and I thought that the website can be of help to someone else because it sure was for me. Lots of interesting information there.

The app that I linked calculates the Hansen solubility parameters of solvent or a mixture of solvents and gives you the distance (Ra) between the solvent(s) and the polymer. So its very easy to use, because you can try different blends of solvents and just minimize Ra to have the best solubility.

Dissolve polystyrene in Dimethyl formamide(DMF) as a solvent

Hi Ivaylo Hitsov ,

I visited the website you linked, it seems fantastic. it, however, contains not many solvent data. Just several solvents were added to the app/ If I want to mix the solvent that not listed in the app. What should I do?

Thank you very much.

Hi N.T L.,

I am not affiliated with the team, but they have a software that can do much more in depth calculations and predictions. The website is just a "preview". The software is called HSPiP.

I hope this helps!

Ivaylo

Please brief article on HSPiP

On this topic it may be worth to check also: T. Shiino, K. Nobuta, H. Onishi, “Solvent for polystyrene, method for reducing volume of polystyrene foam and method for recycling polystyrene foam”, US Patent 5,629,352, May 13, 1997.

dear Ehssan Al-Bermany

I have tried with CF, THF but it seems that my PS was not dissolved in CF, THF.

Have you ever had this problem?

try to make solvent mixtures with different ratios of (DMF and toluene)

In Benzene or toluene (non polar solvent ) and according to solubility parameter of polymer and solvent, it must be the different in solubility parameter not exceed 1

Chloroform

N.T.L. : Is it possible that what you are trying to dissolve is not polystyrene? Another possibility is that it has been cross-linked, which will make it much less soluble.