International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

Electron beam irradiation has the ability to modify polymer substrates by the process of graft copolymerization in order to synthesize water-soluble copolymers having flocculating properties. The influence of the variation of the process parameters acrylamide/starch (AMD/St) weight ratio, electron beam irradiation dose and dose rate is investigated. Models of the means and variances for the dependencies of the quality characteristics (monomer conversion coefficient, residual monomer concentration and apparent viscosity) from the described process parameters are estimated by implementation of the robust engineering methodology for quality improvement. Multi-criteria optimization involving requirements for economic efficiency, assurance of low toxicity and high copolymer efficiency in flocculation process is also presented.

Electron beam (EB) irradiation has the ability to modify polymer substrates by process of graft copolymerization to synthesize water-soluble copolymers having flocculating potential. Models – depicting the dependencies of the described quality characteristics (their means and variances) from process parameters – are estimated by implementation of the robust engineering methodology for quality improvement. Multiple criteria optimization based on the desirability function approach, involving requirements for economic efficiency, assurance of low toxicity, high copolymer efficiency in flocculation process, good solubility in water, bias, robustness, quality of prediction and the relative importance of responses, is presented.

Experimental investigation of the modification of starch by grafting acrylamide using electron beam irradiation in order to synthesize water-soluble copolymers having flocculation abilities is performed. The influence of the variation of the parameters acrylamide/starch (AMD/St) weight ratio, electron beam irradiation dose and dose rate, as well as the presence or absence of metallic silver nanoparticles is investigated. The characterization of graft copolymers was carried out by monomer conversion coefficient, residual monomer concentration, intrinsic viscosity and Huggins’ constant. Models, describing the dependencies of the quality characteristics (their means and variances) from the process parameters, are estimated by implementation of the robust engineering approach in the case of qualitative and quantitative factors. Multi-criteria optimization involving requirements for economic efficiency, assurance of low toxicity, high copolymer efficiency in flocculation process and good solubility in water is also presented.