Enhanced recovery of acetophenone and 1‐phenylethanol from petrochemical effluent by highly porous starch-based hypercrosslinked polymers

It is highly desirable to design and fabricate porous bio-based adsorbent for efficient and selective recovery of acetophenone (AP) and 1-phenylethanol (PE) from the effluent of propylene oxide and styrene monomer co-production (PO/SM) process. Herein, using cassava starch as the starting material, starch-graft-styrene hypercrosslinked polymers (SSHCPs) were designed and synthesized facilely by starch-graft-styrene copolymerization and subsequent crosslinking via a Friedel-Crafts alkylation route. SSHCP-3 (knitted by 4,4′-bis-(chloromethyl)-1,1′-biphenyl) shows high BET surface area (818 m 2 ·g −1 ), large pore volume, and high thermal stability, making it a highly efficient adsorbent for removal of aromatic pollutants from water. SSHCP-3 showed high uptake for AP (2.82 mmol·g −1 ) and selectivity (4.95) of AP over PE in binary-solute adsorption experiments. Spectral studies and theoretical calculation demonstrated that AP and PE uptake could occur at glucose units and benzene moiety via van der Waals interaction and π-π stacking interactions. SSHCP-3 also showed excellent adsorption efficiency of AP (93.6%) and PE (74.4%) in the wastewater discharged from PO/SM process. These results demonstrated that transforming styrene and starch to bio-based hypercrosslinked polymers provides an environmentally friendly and attractive strategy for recovery of AP and PE in practical application.