Functional Dendrimeric “Nanosponges” for the Removal of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons from Water

Abstract

A series of poly(propylene imine) dendrimers functionalized with long aliphatic chains has been prepared and characterized. The property of these dendrimers to encapsulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from water down to a few ppb level has been established. The inclusion formation constants are orders of magnitude higher than those reported for activated carbon (from 1.4 × 104 to 3.4 × 105 M-1) or cyclodextrins (10−103 M-1) while they are comparable to those of cyclodextrin polymers (from 1 × 108 to 5 × 109). Furthermore, the loading capacities depend on polycyclic aromatic compounds and the type of alkylated dendrimeric derivatives, that is, 6−19 mg/g for fluoanthrene, 44−67 mg/g for phenanthrene, and 34−57 mg/g for pyrene. Regeneration is also feasible using nonpolar solvents.

Template‐free Formation of Uniform Urchin‐like α‐FeOOH Hollow Spheres with Superior Capability for Water Treatment

“…[1,2] Transition metal hydroxide or oxide nanomaterials are extensively studied for environmental monitoring, remediation and pollution prevention. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] The special properties of nanomaterials are originated from the rich valence states, vast surface area and variable electronic structures. [4,6,9,14] Researchers worldwide have used iron oxide nanomaterials to remove toxic heavy metal ions and organic pollutants from waste water, in view of their low cost, natural abundance, and environment-friendly properties.…”

Multiscale Modeling for Host-Guest Chemistry of Dendrimers in Solution

“…The breadth across applications is attributed to dendrimers being well-defined, monodisperse nanostructures with tunable critical nanoscale design parameters [15,16], such as size, shape, rigidity, surface functionality, and solvent affinity. For this reason, dendrimers have been studied as hosts for a number of guest species: drugs [1][2][3][4], gene [17][18][19], contrast agents [7,20,21], metal ions [9][10][11][12][13][14], polymers [22], and organic pollutants [23,24]. Astruc and coworkers have written an exceptionally comprehensive review on dendrimers functioning as hosts [25].…”

Poly(sodium acrylate) hydrogels as potential pH-sensitive sorbents for the removal of model organic and inorganic pollutants from water

“…As a final step in our study, we attempted an analysis of the obtained Langmuir isotherms using the following equation (Arkas et al, 2003) …”

“…Thus, besides the classical activated carbon filters, different types of other materials have been proposed and developed, like organically modified synthetic porous silica (Bekiari and Lianos, 2006;Chu et al, 2008;Sayari et al, 2005), dendritic polymers (Arkas et al, 2003;Arkas et al, 2005) and hydrogels (Bekiari et al, 2008;Kofinas and Koussis, 2003). Hydrogels are three-dimensional chemically crosslinked polymer networks, able to swell in water, increasing substantially their original volume while keeping their integrity.…”