Preparation and analysis of high capacity polysulfone capsules

Since the concept of solvent impregnated resins was introduced in the early 1980s, the technique has been applied to a limited amount of applications. The main disadvantage of the resins was that the amount of solvent inside was limited to approximately 1.5 ml/g polymer. A new generation of solvent impregnated resins is introduced. These capsules can contain up to 11.8 ml solvent/g polymer and were prepared using a modified dry impregnation technique. Due to the high solvent loading, the capacity per volume of capsule for extracting products from aqueous phases is therefore dramatically increased.