A Current Review of Polymeric Dispersants and Their Practical Significance in Industrial Water Treatment

摘要

The fouling of equipment surfaces by suspended matter and precipitated scale forming salts is a critical concern to water technologists and plant operators. Certain feed waters, especially surface waters, require far more extensive pretreatment than sources such as deep wells. Polymeric dispersants are used in water treatment formulations to control fouling of equipment surfaces. This paper compares the performance of commercially available polymers as dispersants for a variety of suspended matter i.e., corrosion products, hydroxyapatite, clay, etc., under stressed industrial water system conditions. Results reveal that various factors including polymer architecture, water chemistry, nature of the substrates affect the performance of polymers. It has been observed that presence of water treatment formulation components i.e., homopolymers and phosphonates exhibit marked antagonistic effect on high performance dispersant performance. Additionally, zeta potential data on iron oxide suspensions show that the presence of copolymers compared to homopolymers results in marked increase in the negative charge of iron oxide particles. Based on the data collected, the performance of polymers may be ranked as follows: terpolymer > -copolymer > homopolymer > hybrid polymer.