Free-Radical Grafting Polymerization of Acrylamide monomer to Increase Efficiency of Consumed Cationic Sulfonated Polystyrene Resin

Abstract

This study is engaged in finding suitable chemical methods to cure and increase the efficiency of consumed strongly acidic sulfonated polystyrene exchange resin which are used on a tonnage scale for the production process of water desalting, which shows a weak capability for removing water hardness reached 54%.An attempt was made to increase the resin efficiency by grafting the resin with some acrylamide monomer. This raised efficiency up to 63%. This result encouraged us to increase the chain length of acrylamide monomer by free–radical polymerization using different concentrations of benzoyl peroxide as initiator under pure dry N2 gas. The efficiency of the consumed resin grafted with polyacylamide was increased to 83% for removing hardness of the raw water. All grafting processes were checked by FTIR.