Phenyl-functionalized mesoporous silica materials for the rapid and efficient removal of phthalate esters

Jianwei Fan; Xiaomin Wang; Wei Teng; Jianping Yang; Xianqiang Ran; Xiao Gou; Nan Bai; Menghua Lv; Huawei Xu; Guangming Li; Weixian Zhang; Dongyuan Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2016.10.042

Phenyl-functionalized mesoporous silica materials for the rapid and efficient removal of phthalate esters

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2017 Feb 1:487:354-359. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2016.10.042. Epub 2016 Oct 19.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ College of Environmental Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, PR China.
² College of Environmental Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, PR China. Electronic address: wteng@tongji.edu.cn.
³ Department of Chemistry, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Advanced Materials Laboratory, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.

PMID: 27794236
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2016.10.042

Abstract

Phthalate esters (PAEs) are a group of endocrine disrupting compounds, which have been widely used as plasticizers. To alleviate the environmental and health threats from water resources polluted by PAEs, we prepared phenyl functionalized mesoporous silica materials (ph-SBA-15) were synthesized by a simple post-modification approach for rapid and efficient removal of low concentration of di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP) from aqueous solution. Mesostructure, texture, surface chemistry and surface charges were systemically characterized. The obtained ph-SBA-15 possesses a highly ordered mesostructure, a high surface area (418m²/g), uniform mesopores (6.5nm) and high-density organic groups around 11wt.%. Batch adsorption experiments revealed that phenyl modified SBA-15 had an excellent ability to remove DBP with the maximum adsorption capacity up to ∼40mg/g at 25°C. The thermodynamics and kinetics for the adsorption were also investigated, demonstrating an exothermic, multi-layer and fast adsorption process. In addition, DBP adsorption was found to be sensitive to the pH and the uptake was observed to be greatest at around pH 7.0. Furthermore, this material can be effectively regenerated by ethanol.

Keywords: Adsorption; Di-n-butyl phthalate; Functionalization; Mesoporous silica materials; Water treatment.