Chain architectures of various cellulose-based antiscalants on the inhibition of calcium carbonate scale

Wei Yu,Hu Yang

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-78408-w

Abstract

Two series of cellulose-based antiscalants with different chain architectures, i.e., linear carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and branch-shaped carboxymethyl cellulose-graft-poly(acrylic acid) (CMC-g-PAA), were synthesized. The carboxyl groups were distributed on CMC backbone but mainly on the grafted chains of CMC-g-PAA. The addition of CMC and CMC-g-PAA can both increase the surface energy of CaCO3 scale and decrease its crystal nucleation rate, thereby inhibiting CaCO3 scale formation. The structural effects of these cellulose-based antiscalants, especially the chain architectures, on the scale inhibition were investigated in detail. High degree of carboxymethyl substitution caused better inhibition effect of linear CMC. However, CMC-g-PAA with an appropriate content of carboxyl groups but high average number of PAA grafted chains can achieve high inhibition performance. Besides, with similar contents of carboxyl groups, CMC-g-PAA showed much better inhibition performance than CMC due to the distinct multi-dimensional spatial structure of graft copolymer in solution, causing the enhanced chelation and dispersion effects. Characterization of CaCO3 crystal by scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction confirmed that crystal distortion effect obviously existed in CMC but quite minor in CMC-g-PAA. The differences between the scale-inhibition performance of CMC and CMC-g-PAA should be attributed to the different scale-inhibition mechanisms originated in their distinct chain architectures.

Highlights

Two series of cellulose-based antiscalants with different chain architectures, i.e., linear carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and branch-shaped carboxymethyl cellulose-graft-poly(acrylic acid) (CMC-g-PAA), were synthesized
Two series of cellulose-based antiscalants with different chain architectures, CMC and CMC-g-PAA, were synthesized by etherification and graft polymerization, respectively[24,27,43], which are described in detail in Supplementary Information S1
CMC is a linear polymer with carboxyl groups on the b ackbone[43], but CMC-g-PAA is a graft copolymer and the carboxyl groups contained is mainly distributed on the branched chains[27]

Summary

Introduction

Two series of cellulose-based antiscalants with different chain architectures, i.e., linear carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and branch-shaped carboxymethyl cellulose-graft-poly(acrylic acid) (CMC-g-PAA), were synthesized. In comparison to linear CMC, CMC-g-PAA exhibited multi-dimensional spatial structure in solutions due to its abundant branched chains (Fig. 1), which could facilitate to interact with scale-forming substances including cations and micro-crystals, greatly enhancing its chelation and dispersion effects, efficiently lowering the local S and reducing the scaling potentials, and notably improving the scale-inhibition performance[41,49].

Results

Conclusion