Hybrid porous hypercrosslinking polyanilines: facile Friedel-Crafts preparation, CO2 capture and Cr(VI) removal properties

In this work, a series of hybrid porous hypercrosslinked polyanilines were successfully synthesized by polyaniline and octavinylsilsesquioxane (OVS) via the Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction. Compared with N-alkylation reaction, the new synthetic approach circumvents some intractable problems, such as high reaction temperatures and pressures, tedious procedures and limited reactants. The resulting hybrid porous polyanilines had apparent surface areas in the range of 22 +/- 5 to 461 +/- 20 m(2) g(- 1), and total pore volumes in the range of 0.08-0.30 cm(3) g(- 1). The porosity of these polymers can be fine-tuned by varying the mass ratio of OVS to polyaniline. Gas sorption applications reveal that the CO2 adsorption capacity of HPANI-5 was 0.59 mmol g(- 1) (2.60 wt%) at 298 K and 1.01 bar. Cr(VI) removal experiments reveal that HPANI-1 possessed the maximum Cr(VI) removal capacity at 308 K and pH 1 with an equilibrium adsorption capacity of 1230 +/- 80 mg g(- 1). The results suggested that the resulted hypercrosslinking polyanilines had potential to be used as adsorbents for CO2 uptake and Cr(VI) removal.