Talk:Polybenzimidazole

Capitalization
Chemical polymer names are not internally capitalised, i.e. we write "polyvinyl chloride", not "PolyVinylChloride". I propose to shortly move this article to Polybenzimidazole fiber. -- Securiger 03:48, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction
This article claims that Polybenzimidazole does not melt, yet list a melting point. Iepeulas 14:18, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Objection to the contradiction
The article states that " NO melting point (in flame tests)". This clearly proves that, there is no contradiction in the article, rather a clear understanding on flame tests has to be developed by the user who has stated the contradiction. science redefined 06:11, 9 August 2007 (UTC) Stefa

Objection to the objection to the contradiction
"A clear understanding on flame tests" ought to be given in the article, or linked to (and no, Flame test doesn't seem to shed much light on the matter). What's the article trying to say -- that "flame tests" don't reach 760 °C? Or is there some technical difference between "melting temperature" and "melting point"? Someone needs to fix the article to explain this for non-experts. --Chronodm 13:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Diagram unclear
I wish that the mechanism diagram was more clear. The diagram seems to picture isophthalic acid, yet the text discusses diphenyl isophthalateBriancady413 (talk) 18:34, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catching the problem. The figure was redrawn to show the phenyl ester and the appropriate stoichiometry. --Smokefoot (talk) 03:24, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Content
Your introduction is similar to the old page introduction, however it sums up polybenzimidazole very well. Upon reading the introduction and looking at the new figure you added containing a picture of PBI and its molecular properties, it is very accessible for nonchemists. There is one grammatical error in the sentence, “Polybenzimidazole (Poly-[2,2’-(m-phenylen)-5,5’-bisbenzimidazole], short for PBI)”. I believe it would make more sense to say “PBI, short for (Poly-[2,2’-(m-phenylen)-5,5’-bisbenzimidazole]” or something along those lines. When reading beyond the introduction, I believe the contents of each section do justify its length.  The reader gains a thorough understanding of the history of PBI when reading the discovery section and has the opportunity to obtain specific information under the development section.  That being said, when I read a review article for this molecule, I read that Brinker and Robinson invented the first aliphatic PBI and then two years later Vogel established aromatic PBI 1 .  Is that worth adding to your history?  The properties, synthesis, and applications sections also provide enough content and flow from one topic to the next.  Words such as “space suits”, “membrane fuel cells”, “synthetic fiber”, “melting point”, “drogue parachutes”, “amide linkage”, and  “condensation reaction” are all links to other Wikipedia pages. As I read through the properties and synthesis section, I noticed that there were some informative paragraphs that did not have a reference. If these paragraphs are linked to the reference before or after, I would still recite the reference for each fact listed. Finally, from what I can see, this new page does not appear to be a duplicate from anything on wikipedia, except for the introduction that remains very similar to the previous intro from the old page. But, this page has come a long way from what it used to be and it looks great!

Figure
The majority of figures you have incorporated into your page look original and of high quality. The fire fighter image does not appear to be original but you do have more than five original photos so it may not matter. The only photo that could have a higher resolution is the picture of the PBI fiber being processed through serial steps to make the PBI stable form. All chemdraw structures are aligned accurately and each drawing provides further insight into what you are trying to convey to the reader. In the synthesis section you provide a reaction scheme for the synthesis of PBI. Is this the most commonly used method to synthesize PBI? Why did you choose this method? I would clarify in your text. There are some ways to improve the overall looks of your page, one being to move around parts of your introduction so that there is not a large space between the intro and first figure, and the history section. I also think this page would be clearer by making the section heading font larger than the subsection heading font. Example: The word history should be larger and bolder than the words discovery and development.

Overall
Your page is well organized and consists of new and unique sections and figures that walk the reader through all the important concepts involved in PBI. The page flows nicely, each section leading into the next. Even the applications related to what you talked about in your intro/history. There are small things that could be changed as mentioned above, but overall the page is looking great! You have added a lot of new information that will greatly help anyone who is wondering about the basics of PBI!

1) Chung, T. A Critical Review of Polybenzimidazoles Rev. Macromol. Chem. Phys. 1997, 37, 277-301. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15321799708018367

Chemystery22 (talk) 16:22, 4 March 2014 (UTC)chemystery22 Chemystery22 (talk) 15:05, 26 February 2014 (UTC)chemystery22

Peer Review From Doc JML
In general your new page is much better than the existing one. You provide more narrative materials and add new sections, which makes the page more readable. The contents look abundant. However, there are still some aspects that you may improve with.

The introductory section seems not so accessible to non-expert readers for there some professional words like “synthetic fiber”, “retention of stiffness”, “elevated temperature” and so on, which are also not linked to any wiki pages. I suggest that you add links to these specific items to help readers quickly find more details if they don’t know any of them. Also the introductory section should be a general abstract for the whole page, while some part of your introduction is just a simple repetition of the following sections, like the history part, which is not necessary. I think you may find more recapitulative and succinct language to rephrase this part. At the end of introductory part, you mention a lot of applications of the polybenzimidazole without providing any references, which is not so cogent. I suggest you add some references to these applications so people can find its origins, or at least it will look more persuasive. Also there is a large vacant space in this section, which looks not so consummate. I think it’s the problem of the relative position of the content and picture, or may be the picture’s size. I suggest that you adjust the composing type here to make it more pleasing to the eye.

For the history section, you used discovery and development as subtitles, which is very legible. But the discovery part is more like a story for the lightly inattentive description way. I think it would be better if you change the language style to be more academic and more chronological way. Also here again some words need links, like the “aromatic condensation polymer”, ”thermal stability”, “heteroaromatic”. For the development part, I do praise that you listed the historical events chronologically. I find some events don’t have the specific time after their small blue points. For example, “Previous to this there had been combinations of Nomex, Leather, and Kevlar materials”. I am not sure whether these events happened at the same year with the above one or they just part of the above event. If they are just a partial description of the above event, then you shouldn’t use the same symbol as the history event.

For the properties section, there are only some descriptions about the properties while these descriptions look kind of disorder. Maybe there should be some space between different paragraphs. For some physical and chemical properties, it will be easier to find a specific item if you arrange them in table, not a narrative paragraph. Also I think there may be more properties that you could find and provide in this section, like in the existing page, it has a lot of tables of varies properties.

For the synthesis section, you showed a general method to synthesize the Polybenzimidazole, and it seems an industrial method. But I guess there must be more methods. I find two different ways in two papers about PBI synthesis also and I put the link in the end, I am not sure which method is the best, so maybe you need to provide more methods and elaborate the relationship of different methods, advantages and disadvantages. Also in this section, you use some Chemdraw structures pictures which are very impressive and informative. But I am not very sure whether these pictures are your own work. If not, I suggest you ask for permission from the authors. Another suggestion about this section is the typesetting. There is too much space among the pictures and paragraphs, which looks a bit messy. I strongly suggest you find a better way to arrange them.

For the application section, providing applications in several different fields is very beneficial for various readers. But it seems that each one takes the same proportion and only has one paragraph general description. Maybe you should give more details about the dominant application. I think you may pick one representative application and give more description about it. Also I find a page about some more PBI products which I think should be included in application section. I suggest you provide a link to each of this application item, which will be very helpful to non-expert readers if they want to know more. Also some specific words need to be linked in this section They are too many so I just don’t list here.

Overall, you did a fabulous job! Your page is very updated, informative and comprehensive than before!

Following are the links I mentioned above,hope it useful:

For Introductory Section: http://www.fibersource.com/f-tutor/pbi.htm

For Synthesis Section: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ma0614139 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ma00154a060

For Properties Section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polybenzimidazole_fiber

For Application Section: http://pbiproducts.com/fabrics/en/products/lightweight-gold

DocJML (talk) 16:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)DocJML

Instructor Comments
I've asked both peer reviewers to flesh out their review with some more detail by noon tomorrow (March 4th) to improve their grade. Overall, I found some grammatical errors and I think the application section needs to be re-formatted for readability. Placing all the figures to the right makes it hard to decipher which figure goes with each blurb. In-line figures, centered, without text wrapping is best from a readability standpoint. UMChemProfessor (talk) 17:24, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions from ChemLibrarian
A few more suggestions.
 * To change the location and size of images, see Picture tutorial for tips.
 * Your flow chart is in .tiff format. I would suggest changing it to .png or .svg format for better online display and sharing.
 * To adjust the format of the tables, see Help:Table.
 * The original article has a long list of Appendix for additional property data. Please make sure you do not overwrite those when you move your article to the formal page.
 * I don't see the necessity of separate the History into two subsections.

ChemLibrarian (talk) 19:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Response to Chemystery22
The history you mentioned that Brinker and Robinson invented the first aliphatic PBI is true. We add this to our history part, but because our focus is on aromatic PBI and these are the ones that are widely used, so we still will focus on how vogel discovered that and how it become widely used. We add more links to the site for the words like “space suits”, “membrane fuel cells”, “synthetic fiber”, “melting point”, “drogue parachutes”, “amide linkage”, and “condensation reaction”. We also add reference to some information that before we didn't link any reference.

Regarding the figure, the fire fighter image comes from wiki commons, the author of the image has permitted the usage. We clarify the reaction scheme we used and included the advantages and disadvantages for this synthetic method. A brief history on the synthetic method is also included in the synthetic part to provide more background for the readers.

You mentioned we could make the section header font larger, it is a good advice! However, we already used the second level for our section heading which is already the highest level to the title. The font for the level is a default which we can not change. MOFcreator (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Response to Doc JML
We linked the words you mentioned which may be too professional for non-expert reader like “synthetic fiber”, “retention of stiffness”, “elevated temperature”. In the reference we also linked the original pdf document we referenced for non-expert reader.The problem you mentioned about the large space below introduction is due to the structured contents which are generated automatically. If you hide this the space will disappear and the page will look much nicer.

The history section included a discovery part which gives the general introduction and a development part which list all the development in chronological sequence. We linked some words which may be too academic. We rewrite the point you mention that has no time point in the development part to make it more clear.

For the properties section, We rewrite and reorganize this part. We add some common physical properties and we also add more details on chemical properties to make it more comprehensive and organized. Also, we will include the appendix property table in the original wiki page.

I included the two synthetic methods you mentioned and included a discuss for the comparison between the two methods. Some disadvantages related to the practical synthesis process also are discussed. All the chemdraw figures are original, so there is no copyrights issue here. We rearrange all the figures and make it look nicer.

Regarding the application you mention that should include more evidence from daily life so that can be more convincing and more details on representative application. We rewrite part of our application section and include more reference to products related to daily life using PBI. We also give more details on the first three applications as the representatives. In the modeled PBI resin part, we also provide a link to the external resource which can help non-experts to get more information for the whole picture of the applications. More figures and references were added for this section, too when we try to make people see specific polymer structure we are talking. These reference even included PBI related industrial product like the PBI model resin. MOFcreator (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Response to Instructor
We try to correct all the grammar errors we can find and re-formatted the application section. All the figures were placed in the centered enlarged and went with the text where they were mentioned. MOFcreator (talk) 15:36, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Response to ChemLibrarian
We relocate the image and enlarged some of them. The flow chart has been replaced with the png version for online display. We consider the discovery a general introduction and developing on focusing how PBI gets widely used. So we still keep the history section for two parts. MOFcreator (talk) 15:37, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Ambiguous temperature values
This page gives several temperature values in the format '400 degree' beginning in the 'Thermal stability' section and later elsewhere, without specifying °C or °F. The figures in the postfixed 'Appendix of properties' section suggests that °C is intended in the earlier text, but this is far from clear. I also prefer plural 'degrees' for values above singularity, but this is a minor issue by comparison. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MacJBlack (talk • contribs) 06:08, 20 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Removing maintenance template because it looks like someone already resolved this, the temps were °C. Zato123 (talk) 03:58, 6 October 2020 (UTC)