Research On Oxidative Degradation Of Polyacrylamide (PAM)

Basing on the review of the status and treatment of oilfield wastewater containing Polyacrylamide(PAM), and aiming at the characteristics of the wastewater, we can come to the conclusion that the key processes of the wastewater was oxidative degradation of the polyacrylamide (PAM). We research on oxidative degradation of PAM sewage using the Fenton reagent, the TiO₂ photochemical catalysis and the potassium ferrate. Under three kinds of systems, The effect of conditions such as initial pH value, reaction temperature was researched on the PAM degradation.At the same time, we also researched the kinetics of PAM oxidative degradation under the optimized condition, and the conclusions were carried out. In the Fenton system the PAM degeneration reaction follows a first order kinetics; under the TiO₂ photochemical catalysis condition the reaction order of PAM degradation is 2.5, but in the potassium ferrate system the reaction order of PAM oxidative degradation is 1.9.The intermediate products of PAM degradation were detected by HPLC, basing on the results of HPLC detection we speculated the oxidative degradation mechanism: PAM is degraded to the organic acid of small members and the acrylic amide monomer, which will be degraded into the inorganic compounds if increasing reaction time.