New iron containing water-soluble acrylic copolymers

Water-soluble polymers have gained a great importance in oil and gas producing industry because they are widely used in many technological processes and operations including drilling of wells. Among them, iron containing ones are not so numerous but they also attract much attention due to such interesting properties as tendency to swelling, complexation capacity, magnetic susceptibility, etc.. In this work, studies are made on the possibilities of obtaining new water-soluble iron-containing polymers based on acrylic acid (AA) and propylene oxide (PO) which are significant industrial products. Thus, the new water-soluble iron-containing copolymers have been synthesized by using the neutralization and radical copolymerization reactions. Iron content in these copolymers has been determined by using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Magnetic measurements by Faraday method have confirmed showed that the obtained copolymers are ordinary paramagnetics and the existing iron in them has an oxidation state of +3. Potentially they find application as insulating agents upon drilling of oil and gas wells and as magnetic indicators.