Abstract
Water-soluble copolymers of methacrylic acid and poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate (poly(MAA-co-PEGMA)) present a comb like structure. These macromolecules under alkaline conditions present an anionic backbone and uncharged side chains. The control of their microstructure is of paramount importance for application as cementitious admixtures. With this in mind, open-loop control strategies including monomer starved and optimal addition policies were employed to obtain homogeneous composition copolymers. A detailed mathematical model was developed for the copolymerization of MAA and PEGMA5 and was used to develop optimal feeding strategies. The mathematical model provides a good representation of the experimental data sets and copolymers with desired homogeneous copolymer compositions were synthesized within the shortest possible reaction times.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1000-1009 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Polymer Chemistry |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Feb 2019 |
Funding
The authors thank the financial support received from EUSKAMPUS Fundazioa, POLYMAT (UPV/EHU) and Tecnalia Research & Innovation to carry out the project. The SGIker J. I. Miranda is gratefully acknowledged for his help with the NMR analysis and Dr Amaia Agirre for molar mass analysis. S. Hamzehlou acknowledges the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) for the “Contratación para la especialización de personal investigador doctor” postdoctoral grant.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Euskampus Fundazioa | |
| Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea |