Synthesis, Performance and Mechanism of an Anionic Scale Inhibitor in a Salt System

A novel non-phosphorus and non-nitrogen scale inhibitor IA-HEMA was synthesized in the presence of only C, H and O using itaconic acid (IA) and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) as the raw materials and hydrogen peroxide-ascorbic acid (H2O2-ASA) as the initiating system. The synthesis conditions were optimized with the response surface method (RSM). The results indicated that the material ratio had the largest effect on the scale inhibition rate, followed by initiator dosage, polymerization temperature and polymerization time successively. As demonstrated by the static scale inhibition experiment, the scale inhibition rate was 97.27 % when the IA-HEMA concentration was 100 mg/L. The mechanism was explored by molecular dynamics (MD). The results indicated that IA-HEMA was able to overcome its own distortion and adsorb on the crystal surface, and the scale inhibition performance was related to its chelating and lattice-distortion ability, which effectively inhibited the formation and precipitation of scale. All these findings suggest that IA-HEMA is a quite promising environmentally friendly scale inhibitor in the salt system. This work describes the synthesis and scale inhibition properties in salt system of IA-HEMA. Due to the structure contain carboxyl, hydroxy, etc., IA-HEMA has good hydrophilicity and saltresistance, can exhibit excellent calcium scale inhibitory properties in salt system. In addition, molecular dynamics indicated that IA-HEMA was able to overcome its own distortion and adsorb on the crystal surface.image