Abstract
Sixteen copolymers of acrylamide and N,N′-methylene bisacrylamide were synthesized using ammonium persulfate and dimethylaminopropionitrile as initiators. The water regain values of these gels were found to increase with decreasing total monomer concentration and with decreasing N,N′-methylene bisacrylamide/acrylamide ratio. The partition coefficients (Kd) of a variety of compounds of molecular weights between 104 and 580 000 were determined by normal elution column chromatography for three gels. The Kd values for a given solute using different gels were found to increase with decreasing total monomer concentration of the gel and with decreasing N,N′-methylene bisacrylamide/acrylamide ratio. For various solutes through the same column, the Kd values varied linearly with the logarithms of the corresponding molecular weights over the Kd range of 0.1 to 0.6. However, a number of compounds showed deviations from this relationship.