Polypropylene prefilters with surface imprinted layer

The paper focuses on preparation of dual purpose porous prefilter that can serve either as a filter or sorbent for removal of bisphenol A. To obtain such materials, a possibility to form imprinted layer of methyl methacrylate and ethylene glycol methacrylate copolymer was evaluated. The layer was grafted to plasma activated porous polypropylene filters. It was noted formation of some patches on the surface for lower grafting yield. The patches increased their size up to formation of continuous layer. It was noted that optimization of grafting parameters should be performed separately and the use of the same protocol as for bulk polymerization of molecularly imprinted polymers could not be applied. The dual purpose prefilters were able to catch bisphenol A during filtration and its concentration was reduced significantly while other phenol derivatives were not adsorbed. By the use of molecularly imprinted filters, the removal of bisphenol A was four time higher than that removal on non-imprinted membranes. The best sorption properties were obtained for materials grafted by monomers with 4:6 M ratio of methyl methacrylate to ethylene glycol dimethacrylate. The static sorption reached the value of 0.06 mmol g−1 and bisphenol A was rejected at 70% level in filtration of 0.2 mM BPA aqueous solution.