GT70 - Abstract Preview
GT70
Symposium: S01 - General Session
Poster Presentation
 
 

Micro vs. macrofluidics. Encapsulation of acetic acid in porous polymer beads on a large scale.

Ferrer Juan (1)*, Menner Angelika (1), Bismarck Alexander (1)

(1) University of Vienna - Vienna - Austria

Porous polymer beads are spherical polymer particles that contain pores and can have a close or open cellular structure depending if those pores are interconnected or isolated. They can be used in a wide range of applications such as separation science, ion-exchange resins, scavengers, adsorbents, blood plasma detoxification or supports for enzymes to catalyst immobilization. However, most of these applications require an interconnected pore structure and high surface areas. Furthermore, porous polymer beads can be used in self-healing composite materials where they contain the healing agent. But this requires the hermetic encapsulation of the healing agent for a certain period of time as the healing agent has to be released only when the composite material fails e.g. as a result of an accident. In our work, we introduce our newly developed co-flow method to produce filled polymer beads, which have a protective closed celled skin at the surface and an interconnected internal pore structure. We were able to produce filled polymer beads on a large scale and also in a range from 200 to a few 3000 microns. Our co-flow process is inspired by a microfluidic approach. Whereby, individual drops of a High Internal Phase Emulsion (HIPE) are injected into a re-circulating carrier phase, which runs through a PTFE pipe. The HIPE drops containing acrylate monomers such as MMA or PEGDMA, the surfactant PEO-PPO-PEO 2800 and the photoinitiator Darocure within the continuous phase. This allows their photopolymerisation upon exposal to UV light downstream. In order to demonstrate that it is in fact possible to use such polymer beads as carriers for a self-healing agent we encapsulated acetic acid within the beads by using it as internal phase of the emulsion templates. By investigating leakage over time, we can easily quantify how much of the encapsulated medium can be released and we can identify how long the shelf-life of such beads is, as well.