Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SA6-O044
SYNTHESIS, CARACTERIZATION AND PROPERTIES EVALUACION
OF HYBRID POLY(ACRYLIC ACID)-MICROALGAE HYDROGELS
Miguel Olvera Sosa 1,2 , Sergio Rosales Mendoza 2,3 , Gabriela Palestino 1,2
1 Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Laboratorio de Biopolímeros y Nanoestructuras,
Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Mexico. 2 Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Sección de
Biotecnología, Centro de Investigación en Ciencias de la Salud y Biomedicina, Mexico.
3 Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, Laboratorio de Biofarmacéuticos Recombinantes,
Facultad de Ciencias Químicas, Mexico.
Currently, the study of natural biopolymers has increased due to its low cost,
biodegradable properties and low toxicity. However, these have poor
mechanical properties. By other hand, synthetic polymers have excellent
mechanical properties but low biocompatibility or biodegradability. Recent
studies, promote an alternative to create hybrids materials to develop novel
systems with new properties (biodegradability, biocompatibility and high
mechanical resistance). Nowadays, microalgae are promising biopolymers for
applications in biomedicine. In this context, hydrogels of acrylic acid and
microalgae has been synthesized with different ratios. The objective was obtain
a biopolymer with better mechanical and swelling capabilities to be useful in
waste water treatment, biomedical applications, agriculture, among other fields.
The swelling properties of the different copolymers immersed in water and salt
solutions has been studied. The swelling process was followed by measuring the
hydrogel weight as a function of time. It was demonstrated that low
concentrations of microalga promote the formation of three-dimensional
networks (hydrogel) but high concentrations produce a biopolymer with
viscoelastic properties. The formation of the copolymer was verified by infrared
spectroscopy analysis with Fourier transform (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis
(TGA) and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance for solids with crosspolarization
and magic angle ( 13 C NMR-MAS/CP). The swelling capacities of the
hydrogel compared to those that are commercial and the effect of pH are
discussed. The mechanism of copolymerization of this novel materials is
proposed.
Acknowledgment: This work was supported by CONACYT fellowship [grant
number 388119].
Keywords: biopolymer, hydrogel, microalgae
Presenting authors email: miguel_olvera@outlook.com