Radiation and industrial polymers

With the advancement of industrialisation, pollution is a crucial problem for mankind. in the Green drive, i.e to make the world pollution-free, radiation technology takes an important position. Nuclear radiation has made its entry into many chemical processes. 'Polymerisation', 'grafting' and 'curing', all-important chemical processes in the polymer field, can proceed through radiation techniques. The radiation technology is preferred over the other conventional energy resources due to some reasons, e.g, large reactions as well as product quality can be controlled, saving energy as well as resources, clean processes, automation and saving of human resources etc. Apart from this, radiation is also a good sterilising technique over other conventional sterilising techniques. The irradiation of polymers can be applied in various sectors. In this review, the attention has focussed primarily to four sectors, i.e. biomedical, textile, electrical and membrane technology. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.