Preparation and Characterization of Compounds Based on Poly(hydroxymethylacrylamide) and Post-consumer Polypropylene

Abstract

In this work, in order to obtain materials with potential for treatment of water from oil industry, polymer composites were synthesized by polymerization reaction via free radical using n-hydroxymethyl acrylamide (HMAA) in the presence of post-consumer polypropylene (PP) with subsequent condensation reaction catalyzed by heating, which avoids the use of crosslinking agents. The products were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), optical microscopy (OM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Moreover, the bulk density and the degree of swelling were also determined. The synthesis was shown to be reproducible and led to achieving polymer composites with high levels of PP after usage from food packaging, which can be associated with a relatively low cost of production. The swelling capacity and the thermal stability of the composite increased with increasing PP content in the mixture.