Preparation of urethane modified poly(styrene) based resin for removal of phenol

The human being is influenced by the quality of water resources in the natural environment. In order to guarantee a secure and healthy life, the water consumed must be free from harmful chemical substances. The water released into the environment by water purification plants and private organizations should be regularly accessed and examined to maintain complete yielding to water framework act. Thus, treated waters should be safe for consumption and free from harmful compounds to guarantee a healthy life. However, there are environmental organizations for water quality which have given standards to ensure that water is free from contaminants, thus making safe water consumption possible. Water treatment requires adequate analysis and monitoring which includes determination of low level contaminants. The maximum level of contaminants which present in drinking water should be so small that the effect is harmless to human health. Thus analytical methods are important to quantify the contaminants. Phenol and derivatives are harmful substances found in water. Moreover, faced with more and more stringent regulations, the water contamination has also become noteworthy source of concern and priority for most industrial sectors. Phenols are aromatic components which contain one and more hydroxyl groups connected to aromatic ring. Phenol is a benzene derivative having chemical formula of C6H5OH with a structure of a hydroxyl group bonded to the phenyl ring. It is a colorless, crystalline substance of characteristic odor, soluble in water and organic solvents. Phenols are similar to alcohols but form stronger hydrogen bonds. Thus, they are more soluble in water than alcohols and have higher boiling points. Phenol was prepared mainly from coal tar, in the early 19th century. Presently, small quantities of phenol is still obtained from coal tar. The demand for phenol grew significantly with the commercialization of phenolic resin (Bakelite), during the 20th centuries. An advanced and popular phenol process is Hock Process after the World War II. It is currently the predominate route for the production of phenol which is accompanied by acetone as a co-product. The main commercial plant utilizing toluene as the feedstock was launched in the 1960's. Nowadays, the commercial production of phenol is not obtained from toluene. Phenols are used in many industrial activities for the production of pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, and synthetic products. Phenols in which certain amount of pesticides and wood preservatives contain can lead to specific health damages even at the lowest concentration levels. Some harmful effects of breathing phenol from the air have been occured for human. Short time effects of phenol include breathing infection and eyes burning. The chronic effects of high exposures cause muscle aches, weak spots, weight loss. Effects of long term and low level exposures cause to increases in cancers and effects on the immune system. Nevertheless, it is important to be aware of phenols and substituted phenols in environmental and biological samples. Many different techniques are used for the removal of phenol from wastewater. The methods can be separated into three categories: chemical, biological and physical. All of them have advantages and disadvantages. Because of high cost and disposal problems, many of these conventional techniques for treating phenol bearing wastewater have now not been widely applied at large scale in the textile and paper industries. Adsorption of phenol has three mechanisms; π-π dispersion interaction, electron donor-acceptor complex formation and hydrogen bond formation. In this thesis these mechanism were applied to synthesis new polymeric resins for phenol removal. Two types of polymeric resins were prepared for adsorption of phenol from the water. In the first part of this study, The Resin 1 was obtained with chloro-sulfonated polystyrene (CSPS) and it excess of ethanolamine. The resin was characterized with analytical methods and FT-IR spectroscopy to determine the functional groups. The Resin 2 was prepared through a reaction of the Resin 1 with butyl isocyanate in dimethyl formamide (DMF) solution. Polymers were characterized by using analytical methods and FT-IR. In the second part of the study, experimental measurements were performed on modified resins for phenol adsorption. The phenol sorption capacities of the resins were described by mixing 0.1 g polymer samples (resin1 and 2) with 10 mL phenol solutions with various concentrations (0.5 M, 0.35M, 0.25 M, 0.1M, 0.05 M, 0.025 M and 0.01 M). The phenol loading capacities were calculated from the initial and ending phenol contents of the solutions. Also, kinetics of phenol sorption was performed at low concentration to investigate the efficiency of the modified resin at trace concentration. For this purpose, pseudo-first order, pseudo-second order and intra particular diffusion kinetics models were used.