From polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to hypercrosslinked porous polymers and derived carbons for the capture of PAHs

Self-targeted strategy: PAHs as precursors for PAH adsorbents. • Monomer selection and carbonization tune porosity (up to 1893 m 2  g −1 ). • CP-NAP-800 captures 49.87% of 16 PAHs from real FCC diesel. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in FCC diesel were employed as building blocks to construct hypercrosslinked polymers via Friedel–Crafts alkylation. KOH-activated carbonization yielded porous carbons with high surface areas (590–1893 m 2 ·g −1 ) and hierarchical microporosity. The optimized adsorbent, CP-NAP-800 (carbonized at 800 °C), exhibited exceptional adsorption for naphthalene (21.77 mg·g −1 ), anthracene (105.14 mg·g −1 ), and acenaphthylene (30.65 mg·g −1 ). Adsorption followed Langmuir and pseudo-second-order kinetics, indicating monolayer π–π stacking interactions with graphitized carbon. In real FCC diesel, CP-NAP-800 achieved a total capacity of 355.88 mg·g −1 for 16 priority PAHs with 49.87% removal efficiency, and maintained stable performance over six cycles. This work presents a novel self-targeted strategy for PAH capture and recovery, where the pollutants themselves serve as precursors, offering a sustainable remediation approach for the petrochemical industry. Download: Download high-res image (162KB) Download: Download full-size image