Optimizing the conditions of PGSu synthesis with simplex method

Poly(glycerol succinate) – PGSu – is one of glycerol polyesters which has focused nowadays the interest of scientists developing new biomaterials. Probably the polyester could be used as a drug carrier or as a cell scaffold in tissue engineering. Due to its potential use in medicine, it is extremely important to develop a synthesis and then optimize it to obtain a material with desired properties. In this work one flask two-step polycondensation of glycerol and succinic anhydride to PGSu is presented. Synthesis was optimized with the simplex method and also described using a second-degree equation with two variables (temperature and time) to better find the optimum conditions. PGSu was characterized by FTIR spectroscopy, NMR spectroscopy, degree of esterification was determined, and also molecular weight was calculated for each experiment using Carothers equation. A new synthesis route was developed and optimized. Temperature and time influence on molecular weight and esterification degree of obtained polyester are presented. Based on experiments conducted in this work, it was possible to obtain poly(glycerol succinate) with molecular weight of 6.7 kDa.