Effects of environmental factors on the dispersion behavior of iron oxide in aqueous solutions with poly acrylic acid

Abstract

After preparing aqueous suspensions from magnetite particles with a poly-acrylic acid, we investigated the effects of several experimental parameters. We characterized the stability of the suspensions using visual inspection, sedimentation, adsorption, and thermal stability of the dispersant. The dispersion stability is affected by the solution pH, the concentrations of magnetite particles, the molecular weight, the concentration of the dispersants, and the temperature. The stability of the suspensions increased as the concentration of the dispersant and the temperature increased. In terms of the molecular weights of the dispersant, the suspensions with dispersant of low-molecular weight (1800) were more stable than those of high-molecular weight (250000) at room temperature. However, at high temperature the suspensions with high-molecular weight showed stability. The adsorption efficiency of the dispersant was very low. The dispersant of high-molecular weight showed a higher thermal integrity than that of low-molecular weight. From this work, we obtained the optimum conditions for stable aqueous suspensions of magnetite particles.