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Diapers and Sodium Polyacrylate

Dateline: 01/10/00

By Alan Bruzel

The value of diapers lies in their power of imbibing the liquids that they contact. To absorb, and to not relinquish what is absorbed, is the true test of a diaper's sanitary utility. Cloth diapers may be absorbent and perhaps don't carry the stigma of chemical enhancements, but, at times, natural fibers must yield to synthetic materials.

The ingredient that separates the truly superabsorbent diapers from their more easily saturable brethren is a product of the chemical industry: sodium polyacrylate. Those who trouble themselves to peel away the successive, supporting fasciae of a superabsorbent specimen will discover an abundance of this granular polymer.

Dry sodium polyacrylate when mixed with water becomes a gel-like entity; hydrogen bonding between water and the polymer allows sodium polyacrylate to trap eight-hundred times its weight in distilled water.

Removal of liquids from their capricious wellsprings is thus both unidirectional and irreversible – two necessary attributes for proper diaper function.

What the Web Has to Say about:
Diapers and Sodium Polyacrylate

Diaper Polymer
Measuring how sodium polyacrylate absorbs liquids of differing osmotic strengths. From University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Question of the Day: Sodium Polyacrylate
That factory-added crystalline material in diapers. From Marshall Brain, How Stuff Works.

Slimy Stuff: Sodium Polyacrylate
Structure and mechanism of water absorption. Also, see their articles #5, #6, and #7. From National Plastics Center and Museum.

Superabsorbers
Products that absorb hundreds of times their weight in water. From Wayne Goates, Goddard Middle School.

Super Polymers!
Experimenting with sodium polyacrylate. From the Educator's Guide, Public Broadcasting System.

What's in a Diaper?
Polymer chemistry curriculum for youngsters. From the Pacific Science Center.

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