Porous Polymer Adsorbent for Sequestering Emerging Contaminants from Water

Climate change, industrial development, and population growth stress our available drinking water resources, both because of increased demand and increased levels of anthropogenic pollution. Impacted water sources such as agricultural runoffs or wastewater discharges contain trace organic substances, known as micropollutants, including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, andcomponents of personal care products. Most micropollutants are unregulated, yet some are linked to negative health effects at trace concentrations (μg L-1) found in water resources. Specifically, per-and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) and 1,4-dioxane are environmentally persistent, shown to cause cancers, liver damage, thyroid disease, and other problems,and detected in drinking water sources serving over 100 million Americans according to the Environmental Working Group. As a postdoctoral researcher, I have incorporated supramolecular receptors, such as β-cyclodextrins2and resorcinarene-based cavitands,3into porous polymer networks that outperformed leading adsorbents at removing PFAS and dioxane at environmentally relevent concentrations. Having established this concept for dioxane in a relatively complex porous polymer network, I am now investigating porous aromatic frameworks (PAFs) as simple and versatile platform to tailor pore structure and microenvironment to achieve selective, high capacity, and rapid removal of emerging micropollutants.