Macromolecular grafting of carboxyl polymers on the surface of non-woven fabrics and their adsorption behavior on metal cations

Yonggui Guo; Lida Wang; Jianteng Sun; Zhixian Qi; Jingwen Hu; Yue Huang; Ying Chen; Junfu Wei; Xiaolei Wang; Zhiyun Kong; Huan Zhang; Xiaoqing Zhang; Huicai Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.09.056

Macromolecular grafting of carboxyl polymers on the surface of non-woven fabrics and their adsorption behavior on metal cations

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2024 Jan;653(Pt A):707-720. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.09.056. Epub 2023 Sep 19.

Authors

Yonggui Guo¹, Lida Wang², Jianteng Sun², Zhixian Qi¹, Jingwen Hu¹, Yue Huang², Ying Chen¹, Junfu Wei³, Xiaolei Wang², Zhiyun Kong², Huan Zhang², Xiaoqing Zhang⁴, Huicai Wang⁵

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China; School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China; School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China; Cangzhou Institute of Tiangong University, Cangzhou 061000, China.
⁴ Research Center of Modern Analysis Technology, Tianjin University of Science & Technology, Tianjin 300457, China. Electronic address: zhangxiaoqing@tust.edu.cn.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China; School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Tiangong University, Tianjin 300387, China. Electronic address: wanghuicai@tiangong.edu.cn.

PMID: 37742430
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.09.056

Abstract

In order to address the issues of the time-consuming, the low density of functional groups and the instability of mussel-inspired adsorbents, an efficient in situ cross-linked mussel-inspired coating-assisted macromolecular grafting strategy was proposed to prepare a polyacrylic acid (PAA) grafted polypropylene nonwoven (PP-g-PAA) for the efficient removal of heavy metal ions. The mussel-inspired coating was formed by rapid deposition in the presence of oxidizing agents and polyamines, and then thiol-terminated polyacrylic acid (PAA-SH) prepared by thiol-ene click reaction and glutaraldehyde were added in situ, and then PAA brushes were introduced on the surface of the polypropylene nonwoven via the Michael addition Schiff base reaction between the thiol and o-benzoquinone, and the improvement of the stability of the adsorbent was achieved through in situ formation of the three-dimensional cross-linked structure. A high density carboxyl group functionalized adsorbent with a grafting rate up to 38.98% was obtained, which also exhibited unprecedented tolerance to strong acid, alkali and polar organic solvents. Meanwhile, grafting on polyester nonwovens, sponges and PVDF membrane substrates confirmed the versatility of the proposed method. The PP-g-PAA was characterized by SEM, IR and XPS, and the adsorption behaviors of the adsorbent for Pb²⁺, Cu²⁺ and Cd²⁺ were systematically investigated. The results showed that the adsorption capacity of PP-g-PAA was nearly twice as high as that of the mussel-inspired adsorbent. The adsorption mechanism was also well investigated.

Keywords: Acrylic acid; Adsorption; Catechol; Mussel bionics; Thiolene click.