styrene

styrene, liquid hydrocarbon that is important chiefly for its marked tendency to undergo polymerization (a process in which individual molecules are linked to produce extremely large, multiple-unit molecules). Styrene is employed in the manufacture of polystyrene, an important plastic, as well as a number of specialty plastics and synthetic rubbers.

Pure styrene is a clear, colourless, flammable liquid that boils at 145 °C (293 °F) and freezes at −30.6 °C (−23.1 °F). Unless treated with inhibitor chemicals, it has a tendency to polymerize spontaneously during storage. It is slightly toxic to the nervous system if ingested or inhaled, and contact with the skin and eyes can cause irritation. Although it is suspected of being carcinogenic, studies have not proved it to be so.

The chemical formula for styrene is C₈H₈, but its structural formula, CH₂=CHC₆H₅, more clearly reveals the sources of its commercially useful properties. Styrene is a member of a group of chemical compounds broadly categorized as vinyls—organic compounds whose molecules contain a double bond between two carbon atoms. Under the action of chemical catalysts or initiators, this double bond can be opened, and one of the two resultant single bonds is then able to link to a carbon atom of another styrene molecule; this link contributes to the formation of polystyrene, in which thousands of styrene units are linked along a carbon backbone. Hanging from this backbone are phenyl groups (C₆H₅)—large ring-shaped units that interfere with the spontaneous motion of the chainlike polymer and lend polystyrene its well-known rigidity. The phenyl group is one of the aromatic rings—so called because ring-shaped carbon groups of this type are traditionally associated with hydrocarbons that have a distinct aroma. Styrene, which gives off a penetrating sweetish odour, is therefore one of the aromatic hydrocarbons.

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In the early 19th century, styrene was first isolated from storax, an aromatic balsam obtained from the flowering shrub Styrax officinalis, after which the compound is named. The liquid, known as styrol, was first polymerized to a solid form, later called metastyrol, in 1839. However, its industrial manufacture and utilization were not begun until the late 1930s, after chemists at the Dow Chemical Company in the United States and IG Farben in Germany devised means for obtaining it in a pure state. Almost all styrene is now produced by dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene, a compound obtained by reacting ethylene and benzene—both of which in turn are derived from petroleum. More than 15 million metric tons of the liquid are made each year.

More than half of the styrene produced is made into polystyrene, a light, stiff plastic widely used in injection-molded or foamed articles. Most of the rest is copolymerized with other compounds—for example, with acrylonitrile and butadiene to produce acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer, a hard, tough engineering plastic; with butadiene to make styrene-butadiene rubber, a tough synthetic rubber used in automobile tires; or with acrylonitrile or maleic anhydride to make styrene-acrylonitrile copolymer or styrene-maleic anhydride copolymer, which have improved heat resistance.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) lists styrene as possibly carcinogenic (cancer-causing) in humans. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services classifies styrene as a known carcinogen.