N-isopropyl acrylamide/sodium acrylate hydrogel as draw agent for forward osmosis to concentrate esterification wastewater

In recent years, a temperature-sensitive hydrogel was reported as a promising draw agent in forward osmosis (FO) technology. PEG, acts as porogen, as an enabler to improve the swelling property of hydrogels. From FO test, the addition of porogen to the hydrogel can improve the water flux of FO by increasing the swelling properties of the hydrogel. And the hydrogel modified with porogen improves the concentration efficiency of wastewater from 1.09 to 1.124 times, indicating that the modification of the hydrogel by the porogen has positive significance for FO technology. In this study, an advanced hydrogel was synthesized via physical copolymerization by using N-isopropylacrylamide and sodium acrylate. The internal structure was investigated by SEM test where it was found that that porogens have different mechanisms of action on hydrogel performance: Porogen affects the swelling property of hydrogel by changing the internal network structure through physical “occupation”. The effect of porogen concentration is to act on the porosity of hydrogel, while the main effect of the molecular weight of porogen on the hydrogel structure is by altering the pore size.