Efficient and rapid removal of typical phenolic compounds from water with biobased porous organic polymers

Authors: LIU, YUNLONG - Chinese Academy Of Forestry; ZHOU, XUAN - Chinese Academy Of Forestry; JIN, CAN - Chinese Academy Of Forestry; LIU, GUIFENG - Chinese Academy Of Forestry; Liu, Zengshe - Kevin; KONG, ZHENWU - Chinese Academy Of Forestry

Submitted to: Industrial Crops and Products
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/18/2022
Publication Date: 5/5/2022
Citation: Liu, Y., Zhou, X., Jin, C., Liu, G., Liu, Z., Kong, Z. 2022. Efficient and rapid removal of typical phenolic compounds from water with biobased porous organic polymers. Industrial Crops and Products. 184. Article 114971. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2022.114971.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2022.114971

Interpretive Summary: Cleaning our water sources is a top environmental priority. One of the biggest water pollution problems is caused by compounds from chemical plants. Removing these compounds from water sources is necessary as they seriously damage the aquatic ecosystems. We have discovered bio-based porous or adsorbing materials developed from woody biomass to treat chemical plant waste waters. The results showed these porous materials adsorb three known pollutants and removed about 80% of the pollutants after five cycles. This promising method will benefit environmental community, as well as serve as a possible pollution control for other waterways.

Technical Abstract: Removing phenolic compounds from water resources is urgent as they have seriously damaged aquatic ecological equilibrium. In this study, divanillin-based porous organic polymers (DPP) and 2,5-furandicarboxaldehyde-based porous organic polymers (FPP) were prepared from sustainable lignocellulose-derivatized monomers using a one-step synthetic method. The characterization highlighted the large Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area (SBET 513.9 and 772.8 m2·g-1), mainly mesoporous property (3.4 and 6.5 nm) and high nitrogen content (over 25%) of the obtained DPP and FPP, which rendered them high adsorption affinity toward phenolic pollutants. Specifically, DPP and FPP exhibited the highest adsorption capacity for p-nitrophenol (PNP) (254.2 and 339.4 mg·g-1) calculated by the Langmuir isotherm model. The porous networks of DPP and FPP enabled fast sorption kinetics for PNP with adsorption equilibrium times of only 8 and 4 min, respectively. Thermodynamic investigation revealed adsorption followed spontaneous and exothermic chemisorption processes. The interaction between the PNP and DPP/FPP mainly involved the synergism of hydrogen-bonding interactions, electrostatic force, and p-p stacking interactions. Furthermore, DPP and FPP exhibited outstanding durability and retained over 78.9% and 81.9% removal efficiency for PNP after ten cycles. Therefore, these biobased materials with high adsorption capacity and rapid adsorption rate show promising application in wastewater treatment.