removal of bisphenol a from water solution using molecularly imprinted nanopolymers: isotherm and kinetic studies

In the present study, the adsorption behavior of mesoporous molecularly imprinted polymers for bisphenol a was investigated. molecularly imprinted nanopolymers were synthesized by precipitation polymerization using bisphenol a as a template molecule. two molecular ratios of template: functional monomer: cross-linker (1:6:30 (mip-6) and 1:4:20 (mip-4)) was considered for experiments. ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (egdma) as a crosslinker, methacrylic acid (maa) as a functional monomer and 2, 2´-azobisisobutyronitrile (aibn) as an initiator were used for the synthesis of polymers. moreover, langmuir and freundlich adsorption isotherms, and pseudo-firstorder and pseudo-second-order kinetic models were studied for the adsorption mechanism. results showed that porous polymers with an average pore diameter of 13 to 17 nm and a specific surface area of 326 to 439 (cm^3/g) were obtained. the maximum adsorption capacity was 400.1 μmol/g for mip-6. sem analysis showed that the synthesized polymer particles were spherical. the highest adsorption efficiency of bisphenol a achieved by mip-6 was 71%.