Application of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers in the Analysis of Waters and Wastewaters

Abstract

The increase of the global population and shortage of renewable water resources urges the development of possible remedies to improve the quality and reusability of waste and contaminated water supplies. Different water pollutants, such as heavy metals, dyes, pesticides, endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs), and pharmaceuticals, are produced through continuous technical and industrial developments that are emerging with the increasing population. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) represent a class of synthetic receptors that can be produced from different types of polymerization reactions between a target template and functional monomer(s), having functional groups specifically interacting with the template; such interactions can be tailored according to the purpose of designing the polymer and based on the nature of the target compounds. The removal of the template using suitable knocking out agents renders a recognition cavity that can specifically rebind to the target template which is the main mechanism of the applicability of MIPs in electrochemical sensors and as solid phase extraction sorbents. MIPs have unique properties in terms of stability, selectivity, and resistance to acids and bases besides being of low cost and simple to prepare; thus, they are excellent materials to be used for water analysis. The current review represents the different applications of MIPs in the past five years for the detection of different classes of water and wastewater contaminants and possible approaches for future applications.

Remediation of pharmaceuticals from contaminated water by molecularly imprinted polymers: a review

“…In recent years, the widespread use of pharmaceutical drugs has raised serious concerns about potential unfavorable effects on human health due to their improper disposal into the environment (Metwally et al 2021 ). The pharmaceuticals and their metabolites can infiltrate the aquatic environment via different routes as illustrated in Fig.…”

“…It has been well recognized that different types of pharmaceuticals including antibiotics, antiseptics, antidepressants, analgesics, antiretroviral, anticonvulsant, hormones, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were found in wastewaters (Khulu et al 2021 , 2022 ; Metwally et al 2021 ). Among them, antibiotics are considered as a new class of environmental pollutants, which can cause potential damage to ecosystem survival since continuous exposure leads to the development of bacterial resistance to existing antibiotics (Yang et al 2018 ; Hu et al 2021a , b ).…”

Recent Trends in the Development of Carbon-Based Electrodes Modified with Molecularly Imprinted Polymers for Antibiotic Electroanalysis

“…MIPs are mechanically and chemically stable even at extreme pH and temperature values and, therefore, suitable for MIP-based sensors preparation even if they are single-use or multi-use [73,74]. Owing to these advantages, MIPs found applications in catalysis [75], immunoassays [30], separation [76] and sensing [77][78][79] procedures, in the pharmaceutical and medical fields [68,70,74,80], as well as in food [81,82] and environmental monitoring and control [68,70,80,83,84].…”

“…It involves firstly the formation of a pre-polymerization complex between the template and the functional monomer, followed by the addition of a cross-linker and the initiator (Figure 2), the thermo-or photo-initiation of the polymerization process being triggered. The ratio of the above-mentioned components was optimized in order to assure the best structural stability and binding efficiency of the desired MIP [84,102,106,115]. The adequate amounts of monomer (AAM) and cross-linker (MBAA) were also assessed using the response surface methodology [12].…”

“…The formed polymer must be crashed, grounded and sieved to obtain particles with an optimum average size for the intended application. However, the drawbacks of this technique consist of the irregular shape of the particles with a possible reduction in the recognition capacity during the grinding step and extensive time consumption [84]. Several magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers were obtained by this procedure [4,6].…”