Reversible flocculation of silica suspensions by water-soluble polymers

The possibility to concentrate, then redisperse colloidal suspensions is not only of great theoretical interest, but is also relevant to the industrial process of solid-liquid separation, which must often be followed by a redispersion stage. Up to now, these consecutive operations were unrealizable in the presence of polymers, since flocculation and adsorption were generally considered irreversible in this case. Previous studies have pointed out the occurrence of two main flocculation mechanisms: charge neutralization and interparticle bridging. The use of copolymers makes it possible to take into account these two different mechanisms together. Using this fact we prepared new copolymers of acrylamide with N-vinylimidazole via radical polymerization and characterized them by light scattering, viscometry, potentiometric titrations, and UV studies. One peculiarity of the chosen system is its dependence on pH: actually the degree of neutralization of such cationic polyelectrolytes does vary with pH, especially near the pK value. This paper shows that these copolymers may induce reversible flocculation of negatively charged suspensions, e.g., silica suspensions, by simple pH adjustment. Performances of the system were followed by various physico-chemical methods. The observed results are explained in terms of flocculation mechanisms as a function of pH.