I make a 4% solution and it requires heat, stirring and time. I heat about 1L water to about 35 oC on a hot plate and continue heating and stirring while sprinkling in the 40 g PVA. The PVA goes in slowly and you need to avoid the vortex so that it is well suspended. Continue to heat to about 70oC with stirring. It will dissolve overnight.. If you use a microwave, heat to about 65 oC, stirr and sprinkle in the PVA. The shortest time has been about 2 hours.

there is a really cool SLIME experiment you can do with children using the 4% PVA and 4% borax. Have them stir about 8 mLs 4% borax into about 50 mL PVA in a cup using a stir stick. You can add food coloring to the borax. The gel can be rolled into a ball etc. You can also add talc to make something more like putty. Infoin is on the internet.

I make a 4% solution and it requires heat, stirring and time. I heat about 1L water to about 35 oC on a hot plate and continue heating and stirring while sprinkling in the 40 g PVA. The PVA goes in slowly and you need to avoid the vortex so that it is well suspended. Continue to heat to about 70oC with stirring. It will dissolve overnight.. If you use a microwave, heat to about 65 oC, stirr and sprinkle in the PVA. The shortest time has been about 2 hours.

there is a really cool SLIME experiment you can do with children using the 4% PVA and 4% borax. Have them stir about 8 mLs 4% borax into about 50 mL PVA in a cup using a stir stick. You can add food coloring to the borax. The gel can be rolled into a ball etc. You can also add talc to make something more like putty. Infoin is on the internet.

Thanks I will try it

the solubility of 100 % hydrolized PVA is like a step function. it is very low below 70 C. you have to go to 80 C to dissolve 100% hydrolized PVA (Source: PVA-Developments ed by C. A. FINCH, 1992)

you need to heat up to 80-90C. I solve 400g PVA in 2Lit water on stirring -heating plate in 1 hour while temperature was 85C.

As bexplained above, PVA solubility in water is very low at temperatures below 60 degrees. However, a steady rise in temperature to around 80 degrees (with a stay of 5-10 minutes, will help dissolve PVA in water without any complications. When that is achieved, you need to turn the heat off and bring the solution down to room temperature. Another four hours of stirring at ambient temperature should give you a homogenous solution.

You can try to dissolve in other solvents.

Thanks every one, heating really help to dissolve it

A good way to make PVA solutions is to heat the water to 70-80C first, then add PVA a little at a time while stirring. I waited until each bit of PVA dissolved before adding more. I made my 5% solution in a bottle so that evaporation didn't reduce my volume too much. After the water was heated it didn't take more than an hour to add all the PVA.

It would be better, first preheat your PVA (40oC) and water (~80oC) for 20-30 min in oven followed by adding PVA into water with constant magnetic stirring. Be careful about the lump formation. And finally place your solution in oven at 80oC for 2 hours. Allow more than 1 days for complete dissolution. This is the way I made my 5% PVA (w/w) solution.

Hi, Islam can u please let me know is there any difference between PVA (Hot) and PVA (Cold)

Disperse PVA in cold water about 16-20 C. Then after properly dispersing heat with agitation upto 80 C. use emulsifier for stirring. If too much foam is generated 0.1% Contraspum K 1012 may be added.

Hi. You can use the amorphized PVA (crystallinity ab. 5-10%) . In my experiments the solubility of the PVA goes very quickly with heating to 70C and moderate stirring. It will dissolve in 15 minutes, for the polymer with average Mv 80000 (grad.saponification 98% and more) and end point concentration 5%w/w. Information about gel-free synthesis is attached.

I'm having this problem too (trying to dissolve 5% fully hydrolyzed PVA in water). I think I'll try heating to 80 degreeC in couple of days. Does anybody know the reason why we can dissolved 87% PVA in water but not 100% hydrolyzed?

I also got issues in dissolving PVA.. Fully dissolution of it in water can be achieved by autoclaving the PVA granules in water for 30 minutes. You will definitely get a clear strong viscous PVA solution.

Excuse me, could anyone please tell me how to find the solution enthalpy of  1~89% of PVA in water ? Thank you so much.

First heat your water to (~80oC) in oven followed by adding PVA into water with constant magnetic stirring and the heat kept at (80-98 oC). Be careful about the lump formation for a time about (30-60) min for complete dissolution. This is the way I made my 3% PVA (w/v) solution

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2187076415000810

First I mixed required amount of PVA and water to prepare 5% (w/w) PVA solution and then the mixture was placed in an oven at 70 oC. Every 10 mins the mixture was stirred for around 2 minutes to prevent it from lump. By continuing this process, I got a clear solution by around 6 hours.

Don't heat it!

Put it in the refrigerator. It works much faster and with a lot less effort. e.g., 5 g in 100 ml water dissolves in less than two hours (depends on the molecular weight). You only need to shake it periodically. It works for most polymers.

Heating is the worse thing you can do.

Don't believe me? Neither did my coworkers who were amazed when I showed them.

Why does it work? A polymer in solution has to balance two effects - hydration which will want to make the polymer molecular unravel and entropy that wants the polymer to coil up somewhat. Hydration is easier at low temperatures and - thanks to thermodynamics - unraveling is easier and so the polymer dissolves more readily.