Optimized synthesis of polyacrylamide (PAM) with UV/H2O2 initiating system and evaluation of its application performance

Ultraviolet (UV) initiation polymerization has been attracted great attention from researchers in the field of water and wastewater treatment. In this study, polyacrylamide (PAM) was successfully synthesized by the UV/H2O2 system and was characterized by FTIR, H-1 NMR, C-13 NMR, TG/DSC and SEM. SEM analysis results revealed that the synthesized PAM by UV/H2O2 initiation had different surface structures compared with commercial PAM. The study on factors affecting PAM intrinsic viscosity showed that the optimum conditions for PAM synthesis by the UV/H2O2 initiation system were 600 mu m/cm(2) UV-light intensity, 1.7 wt% H2O2, pH = 6.25 wt% acrylamide (AM), 30 min illumination time. The active radical for PAM polymerization by UV/H2O2 system was validated by adding methanol and tertbutyl alcohol (TBA) to quench hydroxyl the radicals (center dot OH). Evaluation of PAM flocculation performance by treating the kaolin suspension showed that the maximum turbidity removal by the synthesized PAM was 95.4%, which was greatly superior to the commercial PAM.