Novel one-pot microwave synthesis of maleic anhydride based mineral scale inhibitors and their application

Abstract

This paper presents our research efforts in the discovery of pioneering synthetic routes and designing low molecular-weight maleic-anhydride (MA) homopolymers and MA-n-octyl acrylamide (AAO) copolymers (YMR-series) and their application as scale inhibitors for mineral scales. Hence, the solvent-free, eco-friendly, rapid microwave-assisted method has been developed for the first time to synthesize these antiscalants with higher yield and better efficiency. The inhibition ability on the CaSO4 and CaCO3 scale is 100 % with a 3 ppm dosage level at pH 10.45 and temperature 70 °C.Morphological changes of the CaCO3 and CaSO4 scales due to the strong inhibition action of YMR-series polymers have been studied by scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis. It is also observed that the anti-scaling effect of the polymers greatly depends on the molecular weight, while MA copolymers show better inhibition efficiency compared to MA homopolymers.