Facilely synthesized meso-macroporous organic polymers with tunable nitrogen functionality for highly efficient, selective and reversible capture of sulfur dioxide

Porous organic polymers (POPs) with tunable nitrogen functionality, abundant mesopores and macropores, and synthesized from readily available reagents through a simple route, hold promising application in the reversible capture of SO2 from flue gas. In this work, we reported the synthesis of POPs meeting the above-mentioned requirements through the direct solvothermal copolymerization of divinylbenzene (DVB) with 1-vinylimidazole (VI) or 4-vinylpyridine (VP). The synthesized POPs were characterized and investigated for SO2 capture in details, and the mechanism of SO2 capture was also illustrated on molecular basis. It is found that the synthesized POPs can adsorb large amount of SO2, and have the excellent ability to selectively adsorb SO2 from CO2 and N-2. In addition, the adsorption of SO2 by synthesized POPs is highly reversible, and the adsorbed SO2 can be easily recycled by heating and evacuating. The theoretical calculation results are consistent with the experimental results, and explain the high performance of synthesized POPs for reversible capture of SO2.