Functional Polymers from Lignocellulosic Materials: Synthesis, Characterization, and Evaluation of Properties

Abstract

Functional polymers have been prepared through graft copolymerization of a binary monomer mixture of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and acrylamide (AAm) onto Agave americana fibers in the presence of Ce(IV) ions at a temperature of 45.0° ± 0.1°C. The different reaction parameters such as reaction time, temperature, and concentrations of initiator, nitric acid, and monomer were optimized for graft copolymerization of the principal monomer. The optimum graft yield and graft efficiency with MMA was found to be 43.50 and 11.54% respectively. The addition of acrylamide as comonomer showed a significant increase in graft copolymerization of methyl methacrylate onto the lignocellulosic fibers. A synergistic effect of acrylamide on methyl methacrylate was observed when graft copolymers were prepared using different feed compositions (f MMA) ranging from 0.3 to 0.9 at a constant feed molarity of 3.0 × 10−1 mol dm−3. The optimum graft yield of 53.30% was obtained when a feed molarity of 3.0 × 10−1 mol dm−3 was used at a feed composition of 0.7. The graft copolymers were characterized by various techniques such as FT-IR, TGA/DTA, X-RD, and SEM. Further graft copolymers were evaluated for physicochemical properties such as swelling behavior in different solvents, moisture absorption behavior, and resistance to chemicals as a function of percent grafting.