Frontier9
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POLYISOBUTYLENE FROM CHEWING GUM
I have read that certain chewing gums have POLYISOBUTYLENE as their main ingredient. Is there a method of extracting
POLYISOBUTYLENE from chewing gum? Also, which chewing gum brands have POLYISOBUTYLENE as their main
ingredient?POLYISOBUTYLENE FROM CHEWING GUM
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Nicodem
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I don't know which chewing gum contain which polymer, but the best and most practical way to isolate the polymer from the sugars, aromas and other
additives is to chew on them. 
…there is a human touch of the cultist “believer” in every theorist that he must struggle against as being
unworthy of the scientist. Some of the greatest men of science have publicly repudiated a theory which earlier they hotly defended. In this lies their
scientific temper, not in the scientific defense of the theory. - Weston La Barre (Ghost Dance, 1972)
Read the The ScienceMadness Guidelines!
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bio2
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..........POLYISOBUTYLENE......
This is also used in the sticky traps like "Roach Motel"
The large mice traps would be perhaps the most economical
source and no other ingredients to hassle with.
Now; what do we use this polyisobutylene for?
Is it relatively easy to convert to the monomer?
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Frontier9
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Thanks for the info bio2, I didn't realize that pure polyisobutylene is so sticky that it would be used to trap small rodents and insects. My main
use for polyisobutylene would be as a binder in a solid propellant rocket motor grain; but as of yet I haven't been able to find a commonly available
substance that can be used as a plasticizer to make the polyisobutylene plastic/malleable such that it can be worked and shaped, any ideas?
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nitro-genes
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Hopefully vulture isn't on a rampage today, but maybe we are lucky and he is too busy at chemixtry... 
Why extract it from micetraps? You can buy whole tubes full of this shit, called
rodent glue. It consists of 100% polyisobutylene of low molecular weight, hence it is somewhat of a liquid. Because it is very liquid already no
plasticizers should be used, which has some definite drawbacks. Plasticizers are added that have a large temperature range in which they have about
the same viscosity. The viscosity of the 100% polyisobutylene alone will be much more dependant of the temperature than with using plasticizers. In
other words, it will make your plastique very sticky when it becomes hand warm, and very hard when it becomes little colder. The more you add, and the
larger the crystals of the HE/propellant that you use are, the more sticky it becomes...
Only very fine PETN, directly from nitration, with 10% of this rodent glue worked reasonably, but the density was something like 1,34 g/cc, a lot
lower than with 18% of plasticizer (1.40). Add to this the apparent higher % of air, and it is obvious performance will be a lot less then with 18%
plasticizers and little air...
About plasticizers for higher molecular weight polyislobutylene, a lot of oils will work, like castor oil, motor oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, etc,
etc or sesame oil if you like your plastique to smell nice . Motoroil is
convenient since whatever fluid is used to cool/lubricate an engine must offer a very low freezing point and a high boiling point. Good properties for
a plasicizer. If the plastique is very stiff, add more plasticizer, if it is too sticky, add more polyisobutylene. The exact amounts depend highly on
the viscosity of the plasticizer, the molecular weight of the polyisobutylene and the crystal, size, shape and density of your HE/propellant...
[Edited on 9-8-2006 by nitro-genes]
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not_important
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While the thrust of this thread is at using PIB as a binder, it was asked how hard is it to get the monomer.
Isobutylene is a gas, useful for making tert-butanol, t-butyl esters, and MTBE, probably the best ether for general solvent use (though not for
Grignard).
Depolymerizing PIB looks to give you roughly 50% as isobutylene. It also gives you several liquid hydrocarbons, dimers and trimers.
And this is some research done on depolymerizing low MW PIB
http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journals/doilookup?in_doi=10.1021/i...
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