In relation to the wet strength treatment of paper, alkaline-curing resins composed of polyamine and epichlorohydrin were investigated.
Epichlorohydrin was reacted with ethylenediamine, diethylentriamine and polyethyleneimine respectively in methanolic or aqueous solution. The mechanism of reaction was pursued by determining total amino, tertiary amino and epoxy groups in the reaction system, and the condensation products were analysed.
At the reaction temperature of 2030 °C, the amount of tertiary amino group was found to increase according to decrement of that of epoxy group, while the amount of total amino group scarcely changed through the reaction time. The fact impiles that a simple addition reaction such as aminochlorohydrin formation is principally occured as the initial reaction of the condensation. This reaction is facilitated by excess of epichlorohydrin and at higher temperatures. At the higher temperature than 50 °C, however, the amount of total amino group was reather found to decrease; especially in the case of polyethyleneimine the decrement was recognized even at lower temperatures than 2030 °C. The fact would be due to the quarternarization of amino group of aminochlorohydrin mainly by intermolecular cross-linking as side reaction. Excess of epichlorohydrin and higher reaction temperature facilitated the cross-linking to give precipitation. But in many cases, the precipitation is still soluble in hot water if added.
The precipitation was separated by filtration, and the condensation product at the early stage which is water-soluble was obtained by evaporating the reaction mixture under reduced pressure. Both the product and the precipitation were analysed by IR spectra, and each substance was still found to contain many reactive groups indicating the possibility to give more complex polymer by curing. A water-insoluble polymer as the final condensation product was obtained by the curing. A structure of the cured resin was presumed from these experimental results.
It was inferred that the polyethleneimine, when applied as the neutral-and alkaline-curing wet-strength resin to the paper, is desirable to have a long linear structure with lesser branching, if possible.
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