Facile and green preparation of novel adsorption materials by combining sol-gel with ion imprinting technology for selective removal of Cu(II) ions from aqueous solution

Molecular imprinting technology (MIT), often described as a method of making a molecular lock to match a molecular key, is a technique for the creation of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) with tailor-made binding sites complementary to the template molecules in shape, size and functional groups. Owing to their unique features of structure predictability, recognition specificity and application universality, MIPs have found a wide range of applications in various fields. Herein, we propose to comprehensively review the recent advances in molecular imprinting including versatile perspectives and applications, concerning novel preparation technologies and strategies of MIT, and highlight the applications of MIPs. The fundamentals of MIPs involving essential elements, preparation procedures and characterization methods are briefly outlined. Smart MIT for MIPs is especially highlighted including ingenious MIT (surface imprinting, nanoimprinting, etc.), special strategies of MIT (dummy imprinting, segment imprinting, etc.) and stimuli-responsive MIT (single/dual/multi-responsive technology). By virtue of smart MIT, new formatted MIPs gain popularity for versatile applications, including sample pretreatment/chromatographic separation (solid phase extraction, monolithic column chromatography, etc.) and chemical/biological sensing (electrochemical sensing, fluorescence sensing, etc.). Finally, we propose the remaining challenges and future perspectives to accelerate the development of MIT, and to utilize it for further developing versatile MIPs with a wide range of applications (650 references).

Adsorption has been proved to be an excellent way to treat industrial waste effluents, offering significant advantages like the low-cost, availability, profitability, easy of operation and efficiency. Biosorption of heavy metals from aqueous solutions is a relatively new process that has proven very promising in the removal of contaminants from aqueous effluents. Biosorption is becoming a potential alternative to the existing technologies for the removal and/or recovery of toxic metals from wastewater. The major advantages of biosorption technology are its effectiveness in reducing the concentration of heavy metal ions to very low levels and the use of inexpensive biosorbent materials. Metal adsorption and biosorption onto agricultural wastes is a rather complex process affected by several factors. Mechanisms involved in the biosorption process include chemisorption, complexation, adsorption-complexation on surface and pores, ion exchange, microprecipitation, heavy metal hydroxide condensation onto the biosurface, and surface adsorption.

Removal of some divalent heavy metal ions (Cu(2+), Zn(2+), Pb(2+), Cd(2+), Co(2+)) from aqueous solutions using carbon nanotube (CNT) sheets was performed. CNT sheets were synthesized by chemical vapor deposition of cyclohexanol and ferrocene in nitrogen atmosphere at 750°C, and oxidized with concentrated nitric acid at room temperature and then employed as adsorbent for water treatment. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms were used to describe the adsorption behavior of heavy metal ions by oxidized CNT sheets. The obtained results demonstrated that the oxidized CNT sheets can be used as an effective adsorbent for heavy metal ions removal from water. It was found out that kinetics of adsorption varies with initial concentration of heavy metal ions. Preference of adsorption onto the oxidized CNT sheets can be ordered as Pb(2+)>Cd(2+)>Co(2+)>Zn(2+)>Cu(2+). Using the oxidized CNT sheets, waste water treatment without CNT leakage into water is economically feasible. Therefore, CNT sheets have good potential application in environmental protection. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.