The dissolution of polielectrolyte powders was monitored by flowing dissolving material through an online filter, a multi-angle light scattering unit, a refractometer and a capillary viscometer. When the polyelectrolytes were dissolved in solutions of moderate ionic strength their dissolution behavior was similar to that of neutral polymers. When dissolved in pure water, however, there was a small population of aggregates that appeared at the beginning of the dissolution process. The conformation of the aggregates seems to evolve from a spherically simmetric gaussian distribution of mass density into structures resembling random coils containing multiple chains, before dissolving completely into well dispersed, stiffened coil polielectrolytes.
Dissolution; polyelectrolytes; light scattering; aggregates; non-equilibrium
