Characterization of polyacrylamide-grafted sodium alginate: A novel polymeric flocculant

The synthesis of sodium alginate-g-polyacrylamide was carried out by a ceri c-ion-induced solution polymerization technique. Six grades of graft copoly mers were synthesized by the variation of catalyst and monomer concentratio ns. These graft copolymers were characterized by intrinsic viscosity measur ements, C-13-NMR spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric ana lysis, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray diffraction. From the charac terizations, it could be concluded that there was a substantial amount of g rafting with a minimum formation of homopolymer. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons , Inc.