Theoretical investigation of the effect of NP‐10 concentration on the swelling behavior of AA‐NaAA/NP hydrogel

Abstract A novel superabsorbent polymer (SAP), acrylic acid‐ sodium acrylate/polyoxyethylene (10) nonyl phenyl ether (AA‐NaAA/NP), was synthesized with ammonium persulfate (APS) as the initiator and N,N′‐methylene bisacrylamide (MBA) as the crosslinker. The effects of the polyoxyethylene (10) nonyl phenyl ether (NP‐10) concentration on the properties of the SAP reaction solution were investigated. A hypothesis that the NP‐10 micelles effect on the polymer configuration was raised. A series of formulas were deduced to describe the hypothesis and the effect of NP‐10 concentration on the SAP swelling ratio. When the SAP was crosslinked by NP‐10 with m(MBA)/m(AA) 0.030% and by NP‐10 with m(MBA)/m(AA) 0.045%, the correlation coefficients of experimental results fitted by the deduced formulas were 0.9541 and 0.9547, respectively. POLYM. COMPOS., 2010. © 2009 Society of Plastics Engineers