Most of the data is in the log book.
The hydrogel has shrank turned brittle but has a glass like state indicating successful polymerisation.

Texture:
Very sticky like taffy when exposed to water.

Day before drying via dessication for 14 days

After dessication / Monomer and Polymer

Day 13:

Success, managed to get the initator to work with the monomer at 60 degrees C without making the test tube explode during the nitrogen gas flussing step.

But with success there is slight failure where I could not open the top for the test tube glass device. Cooking it for another day to see if the cap will loosen. Probably use plyers if it doesnt work out tomorrow.

Well, all went well with 0.33g of monomer and 0.0034g of ACVA.

Problem occurred, when nitrogen flushing the apparatus top glass piece gave wave and glass snapped resulting in significant loss of monomer and activator. Repeating experiment on Tuesday. With a quantity of 0.1g of monomer and about 0.001g of ACVA.

Procedure was quiet straight foward, fluted filter paper washed with dry ethyl acetate.
Vacum dried

Slight error occured as I did not cover the sample when it was in vacuum with a beaker, the reason of this being is when pressure is applied and released the solvent will quickly move out of the solid; problem arises when the solvent is moving out of the sample when pressure is released which could lead the the crystals splitting and flying around in the dessicator

% Yield was around 80%, yielded 0.7g of sample to theorteical sample weight of 0.8

Day 4:

No significant changes, seems to have evolved more monomer, and is bubbling away since the increase in temperature which was initiated on Day 3. Seems promising; problem poses to how to remove the monomer out of the round bottom flask.

By: M. J. MOLINA,1 M. R. GO´ MEZ-ANTO´ N,1 B. L. RIVAS,2 H. A. MATURANA,2 I. F. PIE´ROLA3

Summary:
Methods of removing heavy metal contamination has been proposed:
Filtration, chemical precipitation, simple and chelation ion exchange, sorption, membrane system.

Search for polymer resins and hydrogels which have electron donor groups have the ability to bind to metal cations.

The use of resin has been proposed in these methods:

1. ion-exchange resins
2. polymer-enhanced ultra filtration
3. precipitation agents

Why Hydrogel?
One reason is that they do not transfer susbtance to the aqueous solution, and can be easily cleaned up indefinately.
Hydrogel used poly(vinylimidazole) hydrogel
(similar to vinylimidazolium sulphobetaine except no sulphate group)
Could sulphate group induce antisceptic properties?

Swelling properties was measured:
4.32g of water per gram of dry gel
(gel made is weighted, mixed with water of x amount. Reweighted difference is minused)

How they measured Hg(II) sorption
Preformed in batch with hydrogel particles suspended in aq solution.
Effective concentration of 10g of dry polymer per 1L of solution.
Equilibrium took 2 days at r.t (20 degrees C)
Concluded that time-dependent retention measurements that 15min was sufficient to reach equilibrium.

Apparatus and Method
Tg was determined.
Thermal stability studied.
SEM micrograph was determined via coating surface with gold.

Potentiometric measurement were performed to determine the degree of protonation α by expression:

α = (10(pH initial) – 10(pH final))/(Hydrogel effective concentration)

Hydrogel effective concentration was deteremined by loading experiements, Hydrogel effective concentration was 10g/L = 0.1M.

The hydrogel was synthesized by a radical crosslinking polymerization.

@ pH = 2 most effective with both sulfuric and hydrochloric acid.
Added 15000ppm final about left 840ppm, 94.4% Asborbed

Experimental capacity of a resin is smaller than the calculated maximum capacity, because part of the ligands is not accessible to the metallic ions.

Describes models used and suggestions for why the models fit or do not fit.

Affinity of the imidazole group is studied and reported that it has a large affinity.

Protons and Hg(II)/metal cation compete to be bound by the imidazole group

Day 3:

Results on day 3 resulted in more monomer and  could more easily identify  crystal monomer which seem quiet easily divided. More monomer could be seen, mixture was not boiling yet slightly increased temperature so it boils slightly more.

As by request by everyone to have access to the pictures for the current Food Chemistry Lab on 8th October 2007.

Red is the red cabbage, whilst green is the spinach

Any problems recieving them email me at kelvins@hotmail.com or MSN.

Some simple problems encountered was the 1,3 propanesultone which appeared to crystalline and required a metal spatula to agitate it. Upon agitation at times it would melt into a oily liquid.

Note: 1,3 propanesultone can absorb through skin and eyes.

1-vinylimidazole
Simply readjusted according to weight of 1,3 propanesultone and pipetted out.

Problem:
Stirring could not be achieved when being heated, decided to add 1 boiling chip and see if that would work. Highly doubt it and I believe the monomer I will obtain will not be finely divided as explained in the experiment.

By:
Kourosh Kabiri 1, Sara Faraji-Dana 2 3, Mohammad J. Zohuriaan-Mehr 1 *
1Superabsorbent Hydrogel Division, Department of Paint, Resin and Surface Coatings, Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute (IPPI), P. O. Box 14965-115, Tehran, Iran
2Department of Chemistry, Sharif University of Technology, P.O. Box 11365-9516, Tehran, Iran
3R&D Division, Rahab Resin Co., P.O. Box 14185-458, Tehran, Iran

email: Mohammad J. Zohuriaan-Mehr (m.zohuriaan@ippi.ac.ir mjzohuriaan@yahoo.com)

*Correspondence to Mohammad J. Zohuriaan-Mehr, Superabsorbent Hydrogel Division, Department of Paint, Resin and Surface Coatings, Iran Polymer and Petrochemical Institute (IPPI), P. O. Box 14965-115, Tehran, Iran.

Summary:
Super swelling due to cross linked hydrophphilic structure. Conventially it is though that superabsobents are preapred from non-ioni-anionic monomers.

The water absorbance is usually decreased substantially when the gel is put into an ionic medium. However some lightly crosslinked amphoteric polyelectrolytes and polyzwitterions have potential to swell more in salt solution than in pure water.

(i.e from 1-vinyl-3-sulfopropylimidazolium hydroxide inner salt imbibe 91% of 1M NaCl. whilst in deionised water gel absorbed only 46%)

With a breif review of literature hydrogels, sulfobetaines are exnteisvely used in industries with textiles, adhesives, coatings, flocculants

AMPS and like derivatives where the monomer 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid is copolymerized with other conventional arcylic monomers creating a hydrogel. ( acrylic acid, acrylamide, N,N-dimethylacrylamide and n-dodecyl poly(oxyethylene) maleate)

Suggested used of AMPS with acrylic monomer are skin contact electrodes, support carrier in biomedical engineering and drug delivery applications.

AMP mixed with copolmer to create superabsorbent hydrogels.

Literature has no dictated polymers of sulfobetaine-type monomer and AMPS.

Variables affecting swelling
comonomer ratio
crosslinker content
total monomer concentration
neutralization degree of AMPs on swelling behaviour of the gels which have been investigated