Recent developments on magnetic molecular imprinted polymers (MMIPs) for sensing, capturing, and monitoring pharmaceutical and agricultural pollutants

Abstract

Among the many classes of pollutants, bioactive contaminants including pesticides, herbicides, and other pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs) are causing significant concern. These chemicals have been linked directly to contamination of freshwater and food sources, threatening water and food security. Contamination from antibiotics, one class of PhACs, is also considered to link strongly to the global problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Pollution from these contaminants has hit developing countries harder as a consequence of less stringent legislation on waste discharge from agricultural industries. Current sampling and monitoring methods [e.g. liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC–MS)] are expensive, time‐consuming, immobile and require skilled users. Recent development of devices fitted with molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs) have been found to be particularly attractive owing to their low cost, stability, high selectivity and mobility. MIPs also can be used to extract these organic pollutants at low concentrations. The latest development of magnetic MIPs (MMIPs) further facilitates the separation and recovery of these absorbents by using an external magnetic field after the target molecules have been bound, thus avoiding laborious centrifugation and filtration for separation and recovery. The purpose of this perspective is to summarize the recent development of MMIPs in the past ten years. We will focus on their applications in food industries and the agricultural sector. Several potential developments in combined analytical techniques using MMIPs also will be discussed. As pollution to our environment is now a focal point in human life, new analytical techniques based on MMIPs will be of great interest to the science communities. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry

Degradation of dexamethasone in water using BDD anodic oxidation and persulfate: reaction kinetics and pathways

“…Different levels of DEX and other glucocorticoid pollutants exist in hospital wastewater, city sewage and river water in the range of 52–390 ng L −1 , 7,8 and could have a serious impact on biological and human health through the food chain and bioaccumulation 8,9 . Several studies have reported that conventional wastewater treatment plants based primarily on biological processes are not effective in removing such pharmaceuticals; 10 in this view, their technological upgrade incorporating advanced oxidation processes may be essential to achieve higher removal efficiencies.…”

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

“…Having magnetic properties under certain controlled conditions of process operations can imply that these spent magnetic multiple-template adsorbent-type molecularly imprinted polymers can be recovered from the treated effluent streams quasi entirely by applying an appropriately designed external magnetic field. In this way, the application of the centrifugation and filtration unit operations for the separation and recovery of micropollutant-loaded adsorbent-type molecularly imprinted polymers can be avoided (Aylaz et al 2021 ). Fourth, green and environmentally compatible disposal routes have to be designed for regenerating as much as possible the completely exhausted multiple-template adsorbent-type molecularly imprinted polymers.…”

A Note about Crosslinking Density in Imprinting Polymerization

“…After isolating the polymer, the template is removed [ 1 ]. This results in specific binding sites that allow for the specific binding that differentiates imprinted polymers from non-imprinted resins [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ].…”

“…At this point, MIPs are used in many different applications. Broadly, they can be grouped into two categories: Detection and sensing for a variety of compounds, from contaminants to proteins in cells [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] and extraction and purifications of compounds from environmental and biological samples [19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”