Maleic anhydride–allylpolyethoxy carboxylate copolymer as an effective and environmentally benign inhibitor for calcium carbonate in industrial cooling systems

Abstract

For the control of calcium carbonate scales, a novel environmentally friendly type of scale inhibitor MLn was synthesized. The structure and thermal property of ML15 were characterized and measured by FT-IR, ¹H-NMR, TGA and GPC. The anti-scale property of the MLn copolymer towards CaCO₃ in the artificial cooling water was studied through static scale inhibition tests, the observation shows that CaCO₃ inhibition increase with increasing the degree of polymerization of MLn from 5 to 15, and the dosage of MLn plays an important role on CaCO₃ inhibition. The effect on formation of CaCO₃ was investigated with combination of scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis. Inhibition mechanism is proposed that the interactions between calcium and polyethylene glycol (PEG) are the fundamental impetus to restrain the formation of the scale in cooling water systems.