Development of a facile one-pot synthesized fluorescent green polyesters as cooling water antiscalants for industrial application

Currently, antiscalants used in cooling water are expected to be environmental-friendly, good scale inhibitive, fluorescence tracing, and industrial-friendly. Aliphatic biodegradable photoluminescent polymers (BPLPs) synthesized from citric acid, aliphatic diols, and various amino acids are fluorescent polymers containing heteroatom six-membered conjugated ring chromophores. Their cross-linked BPLPs have potential for use as implant or device materials, and vivo bioimaging probes. However, so far, no one has found that BPLPs can be used as efficient antiscalants for cooling water. In this work, we demonstrate a facile one-pot microwave-assisted synthesis of BPLPs from cost-effective materials. The products were characterized by Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy, 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, gel permeation chromatography, and fluorescence spectroscopy. Thus prepared BPLPs can be directly used as a novel type green fluorescent antiscalant without further purification. They have an excellent calcium phosphate inhibition efficiency that can reach 98.6 % with a dosage of 25 mg·L−1 in the static scale inhibition test at 80 °C.