The role of polymer adsorption in dispersion stability

Adsorption of neutral polymers from individual solutions and their competitive adsorption from binary mixtures as well as the flocculating effect of polymers in colloidal dispersions were studied. it was shown that polymer adsorption may be employed for selective separation of sol mixtures, and the effectiveness of flocculation may be increased by varying the structure of the polymer adsorbed layer. Upon simultaneous competitive adsorption of polymer mixture, preferentially adsorbing polymer may change the conformation of a more weakly adsorbing component, thus resulting in the synergism of the flocculating effect of a polymer mixture. Conditions for the optimization of flocculation by the addition of neutral polymers were determined based on the study of flocculation kinetics.