Macroporous crosslinked polydivinylbenzene/polyacryldiethylenetriamine (PDVB/PADETA) interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) and their efficient adsorption to o-aminobenzoic acid from aqueous solutions

•A strategy to synthesize hydrophobic–hydrophilic PDVB/PADETA IPNs was proposed.•PDVB/PADETA IPNs had a large equilibrium capacity to o-aminobenzoic acid.•Adsorption of o-aminobenzoic acid on PDVB/PADETA IPNs was a fast process.•PDVB/PADETA IPNs had a large dynamic capacity to o-aminobenzoic acid.•PDVB/PADETA IPNs could be regenerated and repeatedly used.

Macroporous crosslinked polydivinylbenzene/polyacryldiethylenetriamine (PDVB/PADETA) interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) were prepared in this study and their adsorption performance was investigated using o-aminobenzoic acid as the adsorbate. The results indicated that PDVB/PADETA IPNs had a large equilibrium capacity to o-aminobenzoic acid, the Freundlich and Sips models were appropriate for fitting the equilibrium data, and the isosteric enthalpy kept constant (about −30 kJ mol−1) with the equilibrium capacity at 5–125 mg g−1. The pseudo-first-order rate equation characterized the kinetic data better than the pseudo-second-order rate equation. At an initial concentration of 593.1 mg L−1 and a flow rate of 84 mL h−1, the breakthrough and saturated capacities were 50.62 and 95.70 mg mL−1 wet resin, respectively, and the resin column could be regenerated by 0.1 mol L−1 of sodium hydroxide (w/v) and 40% of ethanol (v/v).

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