Drying aqueous polymers

A bunch of jelly roll pans and a good oven? ;-) Just kidding...

Google search "dry polyacrylamide" 180,000 hits...

Glancing at the first page of results, it looks like Cytec

and Aquamark, Inc. both sell dry polyacrylamide (cationic and anionic versions available). Hooray, Google.

I'd bet other wastewater treatment chemical manufacturers will have similar offerings in their flocculants sections...

Regards, R. David Zopf Bomar Specialties Co.

If your doing this on a laboratory scale, a good vacuum oven set at 70 Deg. C should do the trick. To avoid the dried polymer sticking to the trays, you may want to try using PP or PE trays. Having a good "purge flow" of nitrogen through the vacuum oven will help the drying.

If you need to dry large quantities, consult dryer manufacturers -- flash, spray, vacuum, etc. dryers.

I am assuming that you know that acrylamide is toxic, and is surprisingly volatile. If you have unreacted monomer in your solution, safe venting the off-gases from drying is important!

Good luck,

Ernie

Try breaking the emulsion/dispersion with a salt, such as magnesium sulphate. Then recover the sludge by filtration. I assume you don't want it as a free-flowing powder!

Colin