Application of poly (ionic liquid) s into sustainable water technologies

Resumen

The central part of this thesis was focused on the use of poly(ionic liquid)s chemistry and emulsion polymerization to develop new materials for water droplet stabilization leading to liquid marbles. Thus, the preparation of microparticulated powders from polymer latexes obtained by emulsion polymerization was selected due to its versatility to functionalize the surface and composition of the final powders. Our final goal was to understand the effect of the polymer microparticle size and chemical nature and functionality into the properties of the liquid marbles. Different properties such as stability onto water, liquid marble size and the permeability of the liquid marbles were investigated. New liquid marbles with special properties such as magnetic and fluorescence were searched. Last, in order to proof the scalability of our liquid marble¿s platform, we also use our polymer powders to develop functional ¿dry water¿. As the final application the liquid marbles were used to prepare empty polymeric microcapsules as oil absorbents for oil capture and recovery. Empty magnetic microcapsules of different sizes were investigated and their selectivity to different oils vs water systems. The final part of this thesis was focussed on developing new poly(ionic liquid)s flocculants for water purification. The main objective here was to understand first how the partial exchange of the counter-anions affected the self-asssembly of the obtained amphiphilic polyelectrolytes in water. Next, we investigated how the self-assembly of the poly(ionic liquid) affected their use as flocculants for water cleaning.