Optimization of ceric ammonium nitrate initiated graft copolymerization of acrylonitrile onto sodium salt of partially carboxymethylated sodium alginate

An unreported graft copolymer was synthesized by carrying out ceric ammonium nitrate initiated graft copolymerization of acrylonitrile onto sodium salt of partially carboxymethylated sodium alginate. The synthetic conditions were systematically optimized through studying the effective reaction parameters including reaction time, temperature and concentrations of monomer, initiator and nitric acid as well as amount of substrate. The influence of these reaction parameters on graft copolymer yields was investigated. A possible initiation mechanism of grafting was proposed and the experimental data of the graft copolymerization were found to agree well with the proposed kinetic scheme. The overall activation energy for the grafting was estimated to be 13.02 kJ/mole. The products of grafting were characterized by FTIR, TGA and SEM data.