Compositional Analysis of Cationic Polyacrylamide Resins by Reactive Pyrolysis-Gas Chromatography in the Presence of Organic Alkali

Abstract

Reactive pyrolysis-gas chromatography (Py-GC) in the presence of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) was successfully applied to the compositional analysis of cationic polyacrylamide (PAAm) resins, prepared from acrylamide (AAm) and dimethylaminoethylmethacrylate (DM). The reactive pyrolysis of cationic PAAm resulted only in hydrolysis of ester linkages in DM units and did not lead to subsequent methylation of hydrolyzates and cyclization. The intense peak of 2-(dimethylamino)ethanol formed from DM units through the reactive pyrolysis was used as the key peak for the determination of DM content. The content of DM units in the cationic PAAm samples was determined with a precision of about 4% of relative standard deviations.