Relation between porosity, particle size and adsorption efficiency of methyl methacrylate-based crosslinked polymer resins

Suspension polymerization is a heterogeneous polymerization process in which a phase containing monomer(s) and initiator is dispersed in a continuous phase. The polymer particles obtained from this technique commonly have spherical morphology. Several factors can affect the characteristics of the obtained material. However, the stirring speed is the one that most significantly interfere the particle size: the higher the speed, the smaller the particle size [1]. For polyvinyl chloride (PVC), it is known that the stirring speed affects the porosity of the particles, but this is not reported for other types of polymers [2]. Thus, the aim of this work was to evaluate the relation between the polymer beads particle size and its porosity, also evaluating the adsorption capacity. For this, three porous polymeric resins based on trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (TMPTMA) and methyl methacrylate (MMA) were obtained using only varying the mechanical stirring speed: 460 RPM, 310 RPM and 250 RPM. Preliminary adsorption tests revealed that the higher the agitation speed, the lower the adsorption efficiency, and in the next step quantitative analysis of porosity will be carried out.