A modified Polanyi-based Dubinin-Ashtakhov model was developed to obtain mechanistic insight into adsorption of phenolic compounds by two representative polymeric adsorbents, XAD-4 (polystyrene) and XAD-7 (polymethacrylate). The adsorption potential  was re-defined by replacing the term (Cw/Cs) with the normalized equivalent concentration in n-hexadecane (CHD), where Cw is the equilibrium concentration and Cs is the aqueous solubility of the solute. By fitting adsorption isotherms to the modified model using , a new normalizing factor (Em) was obtained to quantify the contributions of specific interactions (i.e., H-bonding, dipolar/polarizability, etc.) to the overall adsorption energy. Significant linear correlation was established between �A �, the hydrogen-bond acidity, and �Em� for the target compounds. These results suggest that, in addition to hydrophobic interactions, hydrogen-bonding is predominantly responsible for the adsorption of phenols by XAD-4 and XAD-7. The newly developed model enables further development of predictive tools to estimate the removal of emerging contaminants by polymeric adsorbents.

Modified polanyi-based model for mechanistic understanding of adsorption of phenolic compounds onto polymeric adsorbents

244th National Meeting (2012)

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