Synthesis And Application Of Highly Absorptive Acrylic Resins By Using Glow-discharge Electrolysis Plasma

Glow-discharge electrolysis plasma is a novel technology to prepare polymers with excellent properties. The plasma is sustained by a direct current (DC) glow discharge between an electrode and the electrolyte. The conventional electrolysis turns into glow discharge electrolysis when the applied voltage is high enough in aqueous solution. There are a lot of energetic species to produce by glow discharge electrolysis, such as·OH,·H, HO₂·and so on, and these can initiate polymerization of various monomers. Recently, the monomers adopted in the polymerization were almost the water soluble monomers, such as acrylic acid and acrylamide, there were few reports on the oil soluble monomers. In this work, several acrylic resins were synthesized by glow-discharge electrolysis plasma, and the properties in absorbing organic pollutants were studied in detail. The main contents of the paper are summarized as below:(1) The characteristics, generation and application of plasma were introduced. Methods to produce cold plasma and application of plasma chemistry were described. The application in wastewater treatment, chemical synthesis, polymer materials preparation and surface modification of glow-discharge electrolysis plasma were discussed in brief.(2) A highly absorptive resin was prepared by glow-discharge electrolysis plasma initiated suspension copolymerization, in which methyl methacrylate and butyl acrylate were used as monomers, N,N'-methylenebis(acrylamide) as crosslinking agent. To optimize the synthesis conditions, the discharge voltage, discharge time, polymerization temperature, the ratio of monomers, the amounts of crosslinking agent and supporting electrolyte, as well as the ratio of water to oil, were examined in detail. The structure and properties of the obtained resin were characterized by means of attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TG), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The oil absorbency, absorption selectivity, absorption kinetics and network parameters of the resin were also examined. Results showed that under the optimal conditions, the oil absorbency was about 28.5 g/g for benzene, 25.4 g/g for toluene, 28.0 g/g for xylene, 38.1 g/g for chloroform, and 37.0 g/g for carbon tetrachloride.(3) A highly oil-absorptive resin, poly(butyl acrylate), was prepared by suspension polymerization,which was initiated by glow-discharge electrolysis plasma. The structure was characterized by means of attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. The effects of the discharge voltage, discharge time and the amount of the crosslinking agent on the oil absorbency were examined and discussed in detail. Oil absorbency, oil-absorption kinetics, the ability of regeneration and reaction mechanism of polymerization were also studied.(4) Butyl acrylate and styrene were used as monomers, N, N'-methylenebis(acrylamide) as crosslinking agent, a highly chlorobenzene- absorptive resin was prepared by glow-discharge electrolysis plasma initiated polymerization. The effects of the discharge voltage, ratio of monomers and the amount of the crosslinking agent on the chlorobenzene absorbency were examined and discussed in detail. Characterization was carried out by means of attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), respectively. The absorption rate and absorption kinetics of the resin were also examined. Results showed that under the optimal conditions, the absorbency was about 57.4 g/g for chlorobenzene.