Highly effective scale inhibition performance of amino trimethylenephosphonic acid on calcium carbonate

Amino trimethylenephosphonic acid (ATMP), nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) and ethylenedinitrilotetraacetic acid (EDTA) represent the typical phosphonate and carboxylic acid scale inhibitors, respectively. In this study, the performance of the three molecules in inhibiting the formation of calcium carbonate deposition was tested by static tests. We firstly explained the mechanism of these inhibitors on the deposition of CaCO3 using morphology analysis, crystal testing, molecular dynamics simulation and quantum calculation. We got the conclusion that ATMP showed the outstanding performance of inhibiting the deposition of calcium carbonate, due to its excellent chelate ability with Ca2+, the capability of preventing the layer stacking in forming calcite and the unparalleled role of inducing the lattice distortion of CaCO3 from calcite to vaterite at very low concentration.