Soluble polymers with intrinsic porosity for efficient removal of phenolic compounds from water

Adsorbents have been a long-standing territory of insoluble solid materials in the field of adsorption technique for organic pollutants removal from wastewater. While the robust porous frameworks with high surface areas can give high uptakes and good sorption kinetics, their practical applications are impaired as fouling and sorbent attrition always occur and decay their performance. Here, we describe a simple approach based on the permanently microporous polymer, PIM-1, overcoming the above mentioned issues. PIM-1 demonstrates comparable adsorption capacity to the state-of-the-art phenolic pollutant adsorbents, with the benefit that PIM-1 is resistant to water but soluble in common organic solvents, making it eminently viable for fabrication into different morphologies, and permitting reuse after simple treatments if fouled or blocked. Additionally, PIM-1 presents pH controlled high selectivity for different phenols and low pollutant residue ability to achieve the safety stand of drinking water. DFT calculation revealed that H-bonding between the CN groups of PIM-1 and the phenoxy groups played a critical role for adsorption. This work opens new window of using soluble polymer with microporosity as adsorbents.