Phthalates in the aquatic environment are considered emerging contaminants that have created great concern, since the fate and effects of these chemicals on human life and wildlife are not yet fully known. Phthalates removal from water sources present great challenges using current technologies due to its chemical properties and low concentrations in water. However, methods based on separation via adsorption developed recently by our group and based on mesoporous materials have shown to be a possible solution. Ordered mesoporous silica materials such as SBA-15 have generated great interest due to their large surface area, pore size, and concentration of silanol groups on their surfaces. Although, such structural and chemical versatilities allow these materials to be a suitable platform to develop unique adsorption surfaces, poor hydrostability limits their potential for industrial scale applications. This is due to the presence of micropores that promote the dissolution of the structural framework because of the hydrolysis of the siloxane bonds. The present work focuses on the effective blockage of SBA-15 micropores via incorporation of amino-organics and transition metals with different coordinated water content using grafting, and the performance during the adsorptive removal of a phthalate from aqueous solutions using different variants of SBA-15. The adsorbent was functionalized via immobilization of Co2+, Ni2+ or Cu2+ through the grafting of amino-organic groups onto its surface.

SBA-15 adsorbents with zero microporosity for the adsorptive removal of phthalates from aqueous solutions

248th National Meeting (2014)

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