Is acrylamide a toxic compound?

These polymers can contain residual monomer of acrylamide (AMD), which is known to be a toxic compound. This review focuses on the mechanisms of transfer and degradation, which can affect both PAM and residual AMD, with a special attention given to the potential release of AMD during PAM degradation.

Are Pam flocculants toxic?

The potential environmental hazard does not concern the PAM itself, which is generally considered as not toxic (Andersen 2005), but the products of PAM degradation and the residual AMD contained in the flocculants due to incomplete polymerization process (Labahn et al. 2010; Young et al. 2007; Caulfield et al. 2002).

Does Pam degradation affect flocculant performance?

PAM-based flocculant degradation has been mainly studied for PAMs in aqueous solutions. The degradation of PAMs results in a reduction of the molecular weight of the polymer and can adversely affect the performance of such aqueous solutions in their commercial application as flocculants.

What are flocculants used for?

Flocculants, usually composed of PAMs, are widely used in several industrial fields, particularly in minerals extraction, to enhance solid/liquid separation in water containing suspended matter. These polymers can contain residual monomer of acrylamide (AMD), which is known to be a toxic compound.

What are flocculants made of?

In most cases, flocculants are polymers composed of polyacrylamide (PAM) (Taylor et al. 2002). PAM is a polymer with high molecular weight, synthetized from acrylamide (AMD) and acrylic acid/acrylate (AA) (Scott et al. 1996; Caulfield et al. 2002).

How do high molecular weight PAMS work as flocculants?

High molecular weight PAMs (10 6 to 10 7 g mol −1) work as flocculants by causing suspended particles to bind together to form larger aggregates, which can settle out quickly from solution leaving a clear supernatant (Heath et al. 2006).