Production of a low‐cost scavenger resin to capture aldehydes and ketones in solutions

Abstract

ABSTRACTOver the past years, polymer‐supported reagents have been extensively studied and used in various applications. One class of such reagents is called “scavengers,” which can be used to easily eliminate compounds in a solution. The present work describes the production of a resin that can be used for scavenging ketones and aldehydes using low‐cost reagents and simple reaction steps, named here Amb15‐Iso. This resin is obtained by reacting a low‐cost commercial sulfonyl resin, Amberlyst‐15, with isoniazid, a drug used for the treatment of tuberculosis. Acetone and isobutyraldehyde were used as carbonyl compound models. The reactions were monitored in‐line by ATR‐FTIR and results showed that the polarity of the solvent influences the kinetics of the production of the resin and water proved to be the fastest solvent. For the scavenging of acetone and isobutyraldehyde, two factors showed to have an impact in the amount of compounds captured: the polarity of the solvent and the solubility of water in the solvent. The capacity of scavenging acetone in water varied from 0.11 to 0.28 mmol per gram of resin, depending on the initial acetone concentration. The equilibrium of this reaction was modeled and the equilibrium constant was calculated to be 0.63 ± 0.07 L mol−1. The resin was also recycled and tested in a second round of scavenging and results showed that there was not much difference between the new resin and the recycled one, proving that the Amberlyst‐15 could be reused for a second cycle of scavenging. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 42291.