Highly porous material from poly(styrene/ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) HIPE for agriculture application

Abstract

Nowadays, lacking of water in soil is the very serious problem in Thailand agriculture. In this study, a novel porous polymer, polyHIPE (high internal phase emulsion) synthesized through the emulsion templating technique, has been created as a soil amendment for agricultural application. The distinguished performances of polyHIPEs are excellent water adsorption capacity, controllable size, manageable rigidity and also interconnected porous microstructure. The water adsorption could be further escalated by changing the type of stabilizer salt or increasing the percentage of aqueous phase to obtain a more spongy material. At oil:aqueous phase ratio of 4:96 of poly(S/DVB)HIPE achieved maximum water adsorption capacity (3000%). Moreover, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA), a more hydrophilic and flexible crosslinking monomer, was applied to further improve the water adsorption ability of the material compared with divinylbenzene (DVB). At 70:30 monomer:comonomer ratio, both systems had very similar pore structure but, poly(S/EGDMA)HIPE presented more water uptake capacity. The pore structure, surface area and mechanical strength of the materials were characterized by SEM, Autosorb-iQ and a Lloyd universal testing machine (Compression).