Adsorption behavior of water-wettable hydrophobic porous resins based on divinylbenzene and methyl acrylate

Hydrophobic porous polymer resins based on DVB and methyl acrylate (MA) could be prepared as water-wettable or swellable materials by using purified divinylbenzene (DVB, 98.8%). Consequently, the interior surface of the MA/DVB resins thus obtained, without prior wetting of the resins with a water-miscible organic solvent, is accessible to water, and hence, to solute present in an aqueous solution. The adsorption behavior of the MA/DVB resins was therefore investigated by focusing on the comparison between the resins with and without prewetted, using caffeine and phenol as model adsorbates. The adsorption behavior of the MA/DVB resins without prewetted in an aqueous solution was found to correlate well with the wetting ability of the resins in water, and thus was affected by the MA/DVB ratio, or the DVB and MA contents of the resins. The results suggest that a well water-wettable porous MA/DVB resin could be applied, in a dry state, to the adsorption from water by direct contact with the aqueous solution, without diminishing the ability of the resin to adsorb the solutes.