Preparation and application of porous functional polymers for boron removal in seawater desalination by a mild and free-organic solvents process

Abstract

The development of high-performance adsorbents to address high concentrations of boron and thus acquirement of drinkable water from seawater is a huge challenge. Most of the boron removal adsorbents reported in the literature have complex and organic solvents involved in preparation processes, which makes industrial production difficult. Herein, the porous cross-linked polyglycidyl methacrylate (CLPGMA) with a rich pore structure is prepared in one step by water-in-oil high internal phase emulsification, and then functionalized using water as a solvent to dissolve glucosamine to obtain the boron removal adsorbent. The whole preparation process is facile and free-organic solvents, making it suitable for further industrial production. The adsorbent demonstrates excellent performance in batch adsorption. Especially, we propose to combine the adsorption with reverse osmosis technology, by which the drinkable desalinated seawater can be obtained. The column adsorption experiments show that the adsorbent can rapidly remove boron from desalinated seawater at high flow rates under dynamic conditions to meet drinking water standards. This research provides a new method for the green large-scale synthesis of high-performance boron adsorbent for seawater desalination.