Nylon Reactors

Nylons are polymers having amide linkages, because of which they are also called polyamides. Since proteins are polyamides of various amino acids, they, too, fall into this category, but the discussion in this chapter is limited to industrially important synthetic polyamides. There are two classes of synthetic nylons. One of these is formed from cyclic monomers (or amino acids), as for example, nylon 6 {H HN-(CH₂)_{5-CO n} -OH}, which has six carbon atoms per repeat unit and is made from ∊-caprolactam, nylon 12 {H NH-(CH₂₁₁-CO _n -OH}, having 12 carbon atoms in the repeat unit, and made from the lactam of 12-amino dodecanoic acid, etc. The single index used in describing these nylons indicates the number of carbon atoms in the repeat unit.