Antiscaling properties of novel maleic‐anhydride copolymers prepared via iron (II) – chloride mediated ATRP

A class of maleic anhydride copolymers (YMR‐A series) with a narrow molecular weight distribution between 500–1500 and a polydispersity of 1.0–1.11 was obtained from n‐alkylacrylamide and maleic anhydride monomers via atom transfer radical polymerization. The monomer conversion reached about 71% corresponding to 1:4 [FeCl2] to [SA] molar ratios for (AAH/MA) copolymer initiated by CPN whereas for the polymerization initiated by MCPN the conversion reached 51.9% under similar condition showing better performance of CPN initiator. Resultant polymers were characterized by means of 1H‐NMR and 13C‐NMR. The inhibition behavior of these YMR‐A polymers against CaCO3 and CaSO4 was evaluated using static scale inhibition method. The inhibition efficiency on the calcium carbonate scale is much higher and even with 5 ppm dosage level the efficiency is around 99.33 % at pH 10.45 and temperature 70°C, where as for calcium sulfate scales the inhibition efficiency, is lower and 99.9% inhibition is observed at 7–9 ppm level.