Applications
Five industries, one chemistry: charge-matched PAM turns suspended solids into fast-settling flocs. Dosage ranges below are starting points — always confirm with a jar test on your stream.
Mining & Tailings
The challenge
Fine tailings particles stay suspended for days. Clarified water is slow to recover, thickener underflow is thin, and the pond keeps rising — tying up process water and dam capacity.
How PAM solves it
High-molecular-weight APAM bridges fines into large, dense flocs. Settling becomes a matter of minutes, thickener overflow clears, and water returns to the circuit instead of the pond.
Typical dosage: 5–50 g per tonne of dry solids (jar test to refine)
Wastewater Treatment
The challenge
High suspended solids, color and COD push effluent over discharge limits. Commodity coagulant alone leaves a slow, cloudy floc and rising reagent costs.
How PAM solves it
Pair PAC or alum with the right PAM grade: coagulant neutralizes charge, flocculant builds the floc. APAM for mineral-loaded streams, CPAM for organic and colored effluents.
Typical dosage: 1–20 mg/L after coagulant (jar test to refine)
Sludge Dewatering
The challenge
Digested or biological sludge is hard to dewater: blinding filter cloths, wet cakes, expensive hauling per tonne of mostly water.
How PAM solves it
Charge-matched CPAM neutralizes the sludge's negative surface, releasing bound water and forming flocs that survive belt press, centrifuge and screw press shear. Dose at the point of lowest shear for best capture.
Typical dosage: 2–6 kg/t DS (belt press), 3–8 kg/t DS (centrifuge)
Oilfield & EOR
The challenge
Waterflooding sweeps past oil in high-permeability zones; drilling fluids lose viscosity in saline formations and friction limits pumping rates.
How PAM solves it
PHPA increases injected-water viscosity, improving sweep and mobility ratio. In drilling, it viscosifies brine muds and inhibits shale; as a friction reducer it enables higher-rate slickwater fracturing.
Polymer flooding: 500–2,000 mg/L in injection brine; FR: 0.5–2 kg/m³
Alumina & Red Mud
The challenge
In the Bayer process, red mud settles slowly in hot, concentrated caustic liquor. Poor settling chokes washer trains, dirty overflow contaminates aluminate liquor, and caustic is lost with the mud.
How PAM solves it
Hikon grades for red mud are high-MW anionic polymers selected for hot, high-ionic-strength caustic liquor. They settle mud fast, deliver clear overflow for washer water reuse, and hold performance across seasonal bauxite changes.
Typical dosage: 100–600 g per tonne of dry red mud