Facile surface-engineered polymeric absorbents for simultaneous adsorption and degradation of organic wastes

Polymeric absorbents were surface-engineered with photocatalysts for simultaneous adsorption and degradation of organic wastes in water using a facile Pickering emulsion polymerization method. This facile strategy not only overcome the low light energy utilization of traditional photocatalysts-polymer nanocomposites due to the core-shell structure, but also could convenient control the microstructure of the photocatalysts owing to the separated preparation procedure when compared to the direct growth method. Firstly, binary bismuth oxyhalide composed as BiOI_0.5Cl_0.5 was chosen to engineered polymeric absorbents due to its higher photodegradation efficiency especially. After the emulsification and polymerization process, BiOI_0.5Cl_0.5 acting as the stabilizer would be fixed on the surface of the functional polymeric absorbents to form PA@BiOI_0.5Cl_0.5. Batch experiments were lunched using phenol as the test substance, the results shown that PA@BiOI_0.5Cl_0.5 could remove phenol completely within a short time and could be reused without any treatments with a simultaneous adsorption and degradation process. Furthermore, polymeric absorbents were engineered with commercial TiO₂ to prove the generality of this strategy.