A versatile strategy to fabricate dual-imprinted porous adsorbent for efficient treatment co-contamination of lambda-cyhalothrin and copper(II)

Smart absorbents with high affinity to specific toxicant, especially with multi-affinity to both metal ions and organic pollutants, are very appealing for the treatment of heavy metal and organic co-contaminated water. A versatile strategy based on Pickering high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs) and controllable pore-filled technique was reported to fabricate molecule and ion dual-imprinted polymer adsorbent (M/I-DIPA). 2-Bromoisobutyryl bromide (BIBB)-modified silica nanoparticles (MSPs) were firstly employed to form Pickering HIPEs template, and then it was used to prepare.-cyhalothrin (LC)-imprinted polymer foam (MIPA). Secondly, surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP) was adopted to controllably produce Cu(II)-imprinted adsorbent onto the MSPs which firmly locked in the MIPA shell. As-prepared M/I-DIPA effectively avoids the burying of recognition sites in a secondary imprinting process, and possesses highly permeable macroporous morphology. In batch mode experiments, M/I-DIPA exhibits fast binding kinetics (i.e. 60 min), and the maximum monolayer adsorption amount from Langmuir model for LC and Cu(II) are 120.8 mu mol g(-1) and 101.7 mu mol g(-1) at 35 degrees C, respectively, indicating this strategy makes the defined imprinted cavities well protected in twice imprinting steps. Moreover, LC and Cu(II) have both higher imprinting factor a (about two times) than the other structural analogues, and the excellent selectivity coefficient beta in multi solute system also demonstrates the preferential affinity to templates (i.e. LC and Cu(II)) due to a good imprinting effect. The loss in adsorption amounts of M/I-DIPA for LC and Cu(II) at 120 min after four regeneration cycles are 7.295% and 13.05%, respectively, illustrating good retention of the activity of M/I-DIPA.