Biomass Activated Carbon/SiO2-Based Imprinted Membranes for Selective Separation of Atrazine: A Synergistic Integration System

The extensive use of atrazine in agricultural production has caused increasingly serious environmental risk. It is significant to establish an efficient and environmentally friendly method for removing or treating atrazine pollution from the environment. Herein, the original atrazine-based molecularly imprinted nanocomposite membranes (AMINMs) were first proposed by developing a biomass-based hybrid membrane strategy based on two kinds of inorganic nanoparticles. Inspired from the as-designed nanocomposite-integrated system, integrating biomass activated carbon nanoparticles (BAC) and SiO2 nanoparticles as the porous fillers into basal membranes to improve the various properties of the molecularly imprinted nanocomposite membranes, and the specific effects of SiO2/BAC nanoparticles were systematically examined. Adsorption (adsorption isotherm and adsorption kinetics) and permselectivity experiments were used to test and valuate the selective separation performance of the AMINMs. The valuable experimental results proved that the asprepared AMINMs not only exhibit ideal specific adsorption ability (5.857 mg/g), but also possess excellent permselectivity performance for atrazine (permselectivity factor beta is 2.34). Due to its high specific recognition ability and permselectivity, AMINMs showed great potential in atrazine pollution treatment.