Biodiesel-assisted fabrication of porous polystyrene nanostructures and their excellent adsorption capacity

Abstract

Porous polystyrene nanostructures (PPNs) were synthesized through a facile emulsion polymerization method with assistance from environmental biodiesel. Based on controlling experiments with different biodiesel masses or temperatures, when added 0.2 g biodiesel at 60 °C, the delicate equilibrium between the reaction and diffusion rates was found to contribute to the PPN formation. Diffusion-limited aggregation theory was introduced to explain the possible formation mechanism of the PPNs. Moreover, due to their small pore sizes (40–50 nm) and high specific surface areas (769.3 m²/g), the PPNs showed excellent adsorption efficiency in the cycled adsorption of phenol. The possible adsorption mechanism is that PPNs has abundant benzene ring and phenol to form π–π stacking, thus playing the role of adsorption phenol. In this paper, a novel method of fabricating polystyrene nanostructures assisted by biodiesel is provided, which has a certain guiding effect on adsorption of benzene rings in wastewater.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Porous polystyrene
• biodiesel
• emulsion polymerization
• diffusion-limited aggregation
• adsorption

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 21403301], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [16CX02058A] and the Basic Fundamental Research Funds of Qingdao [16-5-1-41-jch].