Application areas of polyacrylamide?

1.Polyacrylamide water treatment field

Water treatment includes raw water treatment, sewage treatment and industrial water treatment.

In raw water treatment, it can be used in combination with activated carbon for coagulation and clarification of suspended particles in domestic water.

By using organic flocculant acrylamide instead of inorganic flocculant, the water purification capacity can be increased by more than 20% even if the settling tank is not modified;

in sewage treatment, polyacrylamide can increase the use rate of water reuse cycle and can be used for sludge dewatering;

in industrial water treatment, it is used as an important formulation agent. Polyacrylamide is the most used in water treatment in foreign countries, and its application in China is being promoted. The main roles of polyacrylamide in water treatment:

(1) Reduce the amount of flocculant. On the premise of achieving the same water quality, polyacrylamide as coagulant and other flocculants can greatly reduce the amount of flocculants used;

(2) improve water quality. In drinking water treatment and industrial wastewater treatment, polyacrylamide can significantly improve the water quality when used with inorganic flocculants;

(3) Improve floc strength and settling speed. Polyacrylamide forms high strength flocs with good settling performance, thus improving the speed of solid-liquid separation and facilitating sludge dewatering;

(4) Anti-corrosion and anti-scaling of circulating cooling system. The use of polyacrylamide can greatly reduce the amount of inorganic flocculants, thus avoiding the deposition of inorganic substances on the surface of the equipment and slowing down the corrosion and scaling of the equipment.

2.Application of polyacrylamide in oil recovery

Polyacrylamide is a multi-functional oilfield chemical treatment agent, which is widely used in drilling, cementing, completing, repairing, fracturing, acidizing, water injection,

water plugging and dissection, and tertiary oil recovery operations, especially in drilling, water plugging and dissection and tertiary oil recovery fields.

Polyacrylamide aqueous solution has high viscosity, good thickening, flocculation and rheological adjustment,

and is used as oil repellent and drilling mud conditioner in oil extraction. In the middle and late stage of oil extraction, in order to improve the recovery rate of crude oil,

China is now mainly promoting polymer oil repellent and ternary compound oil repellent technology.

By injecting aqueous polyacrylamide solution, the oil-water flow rate ratio can be improved to increase the crude oil content in the recovered material.

Adding polyacrylamide to tertiary oil recovery can increase the oil repelling ability, avoid penetrating the oil layer and improve the recovery rate of oil bed.

China’s petroleum industry is the largest user of polyacrylamide, and the technological progress of polyacrylamide has promoted the development of China’s petroleum industry,

and the demand of petroleum industry has accelerated the pace of technological innovation and the development of polyacrylamide industry.

3.Polyacrylamide paper field

Polyacrylamide is widely used as retention aid, filtration aid and homogenizing agent in paper industry to improve paper quality, pulp dewatering performance, retention rate of fine fibers and fillers, reduce raw material consumption and environmental pollution, and as dispersant to improve paper uniformity. Polyacrylamide is mainly used in the paper industry in two aspects, one is to improve the retention rate of fillers and pigments to reduce the loss of raw materials and environmental pollution; the second is to improve the strength of paper. By adding polyacrylamide to paper, the retention rate of fine fibers and filler particles on the web can be improved and the dehydration of paper can be accelerated. The mechanism of action of polyacrylamide is that the particles in the pulp are retained on the filter cloth by flocculation through electrical neutralization or bridging. The formation of flocs also makes the water in the pulp easier to filter out, reducing the amount of fiber loss in the white water, reducing environmental pollution, and helping to improve the efficiency of filtration and sedimentation equipment.

4. Polyacrylamide medical materials

Polyacrylamide gels are used as non-thrombinogen granulating agents, surgical and contact lens materials, outer coating materials for microcapsules, and as high quality hemostatic tether, women’s sanitary napkins and pediatric diapers.

Polyacrylamide with particle size of several hundred microns to several tens of microns can be used as chromatographic filler (e.g. gel chromatography column filler) and can effectively separate spherical proteins such as cytochromes. It can also be used for further protein desalination and concentration.

Polyacrylamide resins are subjected to Mannich reaction to introduce L-proline or L-hydroxyproline on the side chain of the amide group via a methylene bridge, and in coordination with copper ions, chiral ligand resins are obtained,

which are effective in the splitting of a series of DL-amino acids. The chiral amino acids on the poly(vinylamine) resin obtained by Hofmann degradation are then complexed with copper ions,

and as a stationary phase for ligand exchange chromatography, a series of amino acids can be split, especially for aromatic amino acids, and the splitting time is greatly reduced due to the strong hydrophilicity of the backbone.

5. Other industries of polyacrylamide

Food industry, used in cane sugar, beet sugar production in the clarification of cane juice and syrup phosphorus float extraction.

Enzyme preparation fermentation liquid flocculation clarification industry , also used for feed protein recovery, stable quality, good performance, the recovered protein powder has no adverse effect on chicken survival rate improvement and weight gain,

egg production, synthetic resin coating, civil construction grouting material plugging, building materials industry, improve the quality of cement,

construction industry adhesives, caulking repair and water plugging agent, soil improvement, electroplating industry, printing and dyeing industry, etc.

6. Polyacrylamide development trend

Although the global polyacrylamide market showed signs of recession in 2009 due to the financial crisis, it will gradually pick up in 2011 going forward, and by 2015, the market size will reach $2.51 billion.

The main impetus for market development comes from the recovery of downstream industries, the industry’s environmental protection policy requirements and profits from product-related technical services, as well as the rapid growth of emerging markets.
In 2012, the main application areas of polyacrylamide in China are oil extraction, water treatment, paper making, highly absorbent resin, metallurgy and coal washing.

Its consumption structure is 81% for oilfield mining, 9% for water treatment, 5% for paper making, 2% for mining and 3% for others. Oil extraction is the largest consumption field of polyacrylamide in China, and its consumption accounts for 81% of the total domestic consumption.

Water treatment is the second largest consumption field of polyacrylamide in China. The urban sewage treatment rate in China is less than 30%, the reuse rate of industrial water is 60%,

and the industrial wastewater treatment rate is 77%, which is a big gap compared with developed countries. The dosage of polyacrylamide as flocculant in China’s urban water treatment and wastewater treatment in chemical,

metallurgical, paper, printing and dyeing, sugar, monosodium glutamate, coal, building materials and other industries will continue to increase in the fields of high absorbent resin, cement enhancer, adhesive, leather retanning agent, etc.

For the paper industry, polyacrylamide is mainly used as a binder for pulp fibers and additives, or for wastewater treatment.

Compared to the mature European and North American markets, China, South America, India and other Asia Pacific markets are showing promising growth.

However, the growth of paper production has slowed down due to the economic slowdown and the European debt crisis, which has hindered the development of the polyacrylamide market.

In addition, the paper industry itself is not very technical and the market demand is relatively stable, which determines the limited profitability of polyacrylamide used in this industry.

In addition, polyacrylamide plays an important role in municipal wastewater treatment and industrial wastewater treatment. Increasingly stringent regulations have contributed to the development of the water treatment industry,

and the municipal wastewater treatment sector has not only been unaffected by the financial crisis, but has shown good growth.

New municipal wastewater treatment markets have emerged in North Africa, including countries such as Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, while other countries,

such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are also increasing privatization investments in water treatment.

In industrial wastewater treatment, coal mining and thermal power plant construction offer significant business scope,

while the growing interest in water reuse technologies is also a market driver.