Green Synthesis of Agar/Gelatin Based Superabsorbent (BGCP) Through Gamma Radiation Cross-Linking Polymerization for Castoff as Sustained Drug Delivery Device and in Soil Treatment for Improved Water Retention

Abstract

In this paper, agar/gelatin and acrylic acid-co-vinyl acetate (monomer chains) based superabsorbent, fabricated using gamma radiations as an initiator and N-N′ dimethylene bisacrylamide as a crosslinker, has been investigated for its swelling behaviour (Max. Ps = 8010) in distilled water as a function of time, temperature and pH. The hydrogel has further been applied for sustained delivery of diethyl carbamazine citrate under three pH conditions at 37 °C. It has been found to show non-Fickian type mechanism as the drug release showed diffusion coefficient less than 0.50 for all the pH conditions. The gel characteristic constant ‘n’ was found to be: 0.910 at 9.2 pH, 0.832 at 7.0 pH and 0.768 at 2.2 pH with their corresponding ‘k’: 0.175, 0.242 and 0.413, respectively. The initial diffusion coefficient has been found to show greater values than late diffusion coefficient confirming greater release at the early stages of the drug release than that in the late stages. Also to apply BGCP in soil treatment its moisture retention capacity has been studied using three different soil models. BGCP was found to retain moisture under clay, mix and sand soil models for 57 days, 42 days and 32 days, respectively. Under bio-composting method of biodegradation sample was found to be 91% degraded after 70 days.