Construction of shaped adsorbent based on cyclodextrin organic polymers for removal of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are serious organic contaminants that are produced naturally and anthropogenically. The separation of PAHs by adsorption approach provides an efficient method to avoid the negative effects of PAHs pollution. In this study, cyclodextrin (CD) was grafted to chitosan (CS) by using glutaraldehyde as crosslinking agent to construct shaped CD-CS polymers and carbonization was executed subsequently. The carbonized β-CD-CS-1000 exhibited a significant increasement of BET surface area (CD-CS polymer: 1 m 2 ·g −1 ; β-CD-CS-1000: 1083 m 2 ·g −1 ) and great PAHs adsorption performance (anthracene: 106.34 mg/g; acenaphthylene: 41.02 mg/g). The adsorption kinetic behavior and the equilibrium adsorption process were further explored. β-CD-CS-1000 showed good cyclic adsorption capacity and anti-interference stability with the xylenes as interferon. Furthermore, the adsorbents based CD-CS can be synthesized at the gram-level in the lab and exhibited great adsorption capacity in real diesel. The large-scale preparation of shaped CD-CS adsorbents made it possible to be applied to the petrochemical industry.