A NEW APPROACH FOR ESTIMATING THE PARTICLE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF POLYMER PARTICLES BY CAPILLARY HYDRODYNAMIC FRACTIONATION

CLEMENTI, LUIS A.; VEGA, JORGE R.; GUGLIOTTA, LUIS M.

Santa Fe

Simposio; XI Simposio Argentino de Polímeros; 2015

Instituto de Desarrollo Tecnologico para la Industria Quimica; Universidad Nacional del Litoral

In this work, a new approach is proposed for estimating the particle size distribution (PSD) of polymeric colloids (latex) by capillary hydrodynamic fractionation (CHDF). The proposed method utilizes turbidity detection at several wavelengths. At each elution time, the multi-wavelength turbidity signal is used to estimate the instantaneous PSD by solving an inverse ill-conditioned problem through an artificial neural network (ANN). Then, the global PSD is estimated by integrating the instantaneous PSDs along the entire elution time interval. The present approach does not require diameter calibration and/or band broadening correction. The proposed method was evaluated on the basis of simulated examples involving unimodal and bimodal PSDs. Results showed that, even when the measured fractograms are noisy and exhibit BB and non-linear baseline drift, acceptable PSD estimations are still obtained. Additionally, the proposed method was able to produce accurate PSD estimates when small uncertainties in the refractive index of the polymeric particles were assumed.