Products of Oxidation of an Olefin Structurally Related to GR-S
Abstract The fields of rubber, plastics, surface coatings, and petroleum include a considerable portion of the industrial activity of the world, and in each of these industries oxidation is an important factor in product processing and in the properties of the final product. Information regarding the nature of the oxidation reactions observed in any of these fields can be applied in part to the others. Because of the complexity of the materials involved, it is frequently desirable to study pattern molecules of comparable structure and to seek to apply the knowledge obtained in this way to the more complex systems. This investigation is a part of a research program on the nature of the oxidation of natural and synthetic rubber and related materials. It is confined to the study of an olefin, 5-phenyl-2-pentene, which represents one of the possible repeating structural units of GR-S rubber. There is considerable information in the literature regarding the probable mechanism of oxidation of hydrocarbons, both saturated and unsaturated. The oxidation of olefins, for example, has been studied extensively by workers in the laboratory of the British Rubber Producers' Research Association and the following sequence of reactions for either thermal or photoxidation with molecular oxygen was proposed: