Hypercrosslinked porous polymers hybridized with graphene oxide for water treatment: dye adsorption and degradation

Hypercrosslinked porous polymer hybridized graphene oxide with polymeric high internal phase emulsions (polyHIPEs/GO) were designed as versatile composites for water treatment. Morphologies, chemical composition and thermal stability of the composites were characterized by SEM, FTIR, XPS, XRD and TGA. Tunable adsorption properties and enhanced visible-light photocatalysis towards organic dyes were achieved by the manipulation of functional groups and the inclusion of Ag3PO4, respectively. The adsorption capacity of polyHIPEs/GO towards cationic methyl blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RB) is 1250.3 and 1054.1 μg g−1, respectively. Aminated polyHIPEs/GO (polyHIPEs(NH2)/GO) possesses an adsorption capacity of 1967.3 μg g−1 to anionic eosin Y (EY). The tandem columns of polyHIPEs(NH2)/GO and polyHIPEs/GO can successively and selectively remove the cationic and anionic dyes in a mixed dye solution. Furthermore, enhanced photodegradation ability was obtained after GO reduction and Ag3PO4 addition on polyHIPEs(NH2)/GO. Results show that 3.5 × 10−5 M of MB, RB and EY can be completely photodegraded by 20 mg of the novel photocatalyst within 20, 40 and 35 min, respectively. This work demonstrates that polyHIPEs/GO exhibits tunable properties for multiply progressive applications in water treatment and catalysis.