Mengqiao Wang

Enhanced adsorption and antifouling performance of anion-exchange resin by the effect of incorporated Fe3O4 for removing humic acid

The application of anion-exchange resins (AERs) is limited by fouling, which increases the fresh resin dosage, regeneration frequency, and amount of regeneration effluent. In this study, five AERs with different Fe3O4 amounts was prepared by increasing the amount of Fe3O4 added to 100 g of monomer mixture for suspension polymerization from 0 g to 40 g. Results showed considerably improved pore volume and hydrophilicity of the resin with increased Fe3O4 content, leading to significantly enhanced adsorption and desorption of humic acid. A method of developing novel resins with enhanced adsorption and antifouling abilities by incorporating Fe3O4 was then proposed. The adsorbent structure resulting from the incorporated inorganic particles was found to be important in determining the adsorption behavior of a hybrid adsorbent.

A magnetic sorbent for the efficient and rapid extraction of organic micropollutants from large-volume environmental water samples

A magnetic solid-phase extraction (MSPE) method based on a novel magnetic sorbent was proposed for the extraction of target compounds from large-volume water samples. First, magnetic hypercrosslinked microspheres (NAND-1) were prepared via membrane emulsification-suspension polymerization and post crosslinking reaction. To ensure that the Fe3O4 nanoparticles could completely pass through the membrane without blocking the pores, oleic acid was used to modify the Fe3O4 nanoparticles, which enhanced lipophilicity and monodispersity of the magnetite nanoparticles. The obtained NAND-1 microspheres exhibited super paramagnetic characteristics and excellent magnetic responsiveness with a saturation magnetization of 2.53 emu/g. In addition, a uniform particle size (~8 μm) and a large average surface area (1303.59 m(2)/g) were also observed, which were both beneficial for the extraction of the target compounds. Thus, NAND-1 has the potential to simultaneously exhibit good extraction efficiencies toward different types of organic micropollutants (OMPs), including triazines, carbamazepine and diethyl phthalate. The conditions of the MSPE based on NAND-1 were optimized by single factor and orthogonal design experiments. This MSPE method needed only a small amount of sorbent (50mg/L) for the extraction of OMPs from a large-volume aquatic sample (5L) and reached equilibrium in a short amount of time (30 min). Moreover, the solution volume, the pH, and the salinity had insignificant influences on the extraction of the eight target OMPs. Under the optimum conditions, the recoveries of the eight OMPs calculated by analyzing the spiked samples were from 91.7% to 99.4%. The NAND-1 could be recycled ten times and still achieve recoveries of the eight OMPs higher than 86%. The limits of detection of the eight OMPs ranged from 1.76 to 27.56 ng/L, and the limits of quantification were from 5.71 to 92.05 ng/L. These results indicated that the proposed method, based on the use of NAND-1 as a magnetic sorbent, has the advantages of convenience and high efficiency and can be successfully applied to analyze the OMPs in real water samples.

Preparation of a novel anion exchange group modified hyper-crosslinked resin for the effective adsorption of both tetracycline and humic acid

A novel hyper-crosslinked resin (MENQ) modified with an anion exchange group was prepared using divinylbenzene (DVB) and methyl acrylate (MA) as comonomers via four steps: suspension polymerization, post-crosslinking, ammonolysis and alkylation reactions. The obtained resin had both a high specific surface area (793.34 m2·g−1) and a large exchange capacity (strong base anion exchange capacity, SEC: 0.74 mmol·g−1, weak base anion exchange capacity, WEC: 0.45 mmol·g−1). XAD-4 was selected as an adsorbent for comparison to investigate the adsorption behavior of tetracycline (TC) and humic acid (HA) onto the adsorbents. The results revealed that MENQ could effectively remove both TC and HA. The adsorption capacity of XAD-4 for TC was similar to that of MENQ, but XAD-4 exhibited poor performance for the adsorption of HA. The adsorption isotherms of TC and HA were well-fitted with the Freundlich model, which indicated the existence of heterogeneous adsorption through cation-π bonding and π-π interactions. The optimal solution condition for the adsorption of TC was at a pH of 5–6, whereas the adsorption of HA was enhanced with increasing pH of the solution.

Effect of Natural Organic Matter (NOM) with Different Molecular Size on Tetracycline Removal from Natural Aquatic Environment by Resin

To investigate the effects of molecular size on tetracycline removal by adsorption resin, two typical natural organic matters, humic acid (HA) and tannin acid (TA), with different molecular sizes were chosen to conduct the competitive experiment with tetracycline (TC). The results suggest that HA could slightly increase and TA would significantly decrease the adsorption capacity of XAD-4 resin for TC removing.