Water and Wastewater.com Help Forum - A question about flocculants, help!

Water and Wastewater.com Help Forum - A question about flocculants, help!

aqueous solution is the form the flocculants are applied, or made up at higher concentration before diluting further. The aqueous solutions are prepared either from powder, granular, emulsion form or oil-free dispersion.

That is oil-free dispersion is also a flocculant product sold. The basic problem with highly efficient cationic flocculants is that these are of very high molecular weight with medium to high charge density which results in high viscosity and related problems for preparation of the aqueous solutions.
The most common approach to circumvent this is the emulsion approach.

As far as I know (I hope I remember well) oil-free dispersion means high salt concentration in concentrated flocculant 'solution'.
In normal aqueous environment the polymer chains are in a more or less extended conformation because charged segments repel each other causing high viscosity. Adding high doses of salt will surpress electrostatic interactions and the polyelectolyte molecules coil.
I just do not know how the 'oil-free dispersions' are manufactured, I suppose powder is mixed into the salt solution under high shear. I guess this process requires special know how of the manufacturers.

I think there is no real benefit of using 'oil-free dispersions' instead of emulsions.