Porous organic polymers (POPs) membrane via thiol-yne click chemistry for efficient particulate matter capture and microplastics separation

Abstract In viewing the serious environmental issues caused by microplastics and air pollution, it is of great significance to capture microplastics in water and harmful particulate matter (PM) in atmosphere for maintaining human health. In this study, we report the synthesis of porous composite membrane, which was fabricated using 1,4-phenyldimercaptans and 1,3,5-triacetylbenzene as building blocks via a click chemistry, for microplastics filtration and PM capture. By using polystyrene fluorescent microspheres with a diameter of 0.1 μm as simulated microplastics, the filtration efficiency of the as-resulted porous composite membrane (PCM) was measure to be 90.92% by fluorescence analysis. The results obtained from infrared microspectrography also show that the PCM has superior removal performance for microplastics in terms to urban domestic wastewater. In the case of PM capture, the removal efficiencies of PCM for PM2.5 and PM10 were measured as high as 99.90% ± 0.42% and 99.93% ± 0.26%, respectively. Moreover, its removal efficiency for PM can remain nearly unchanged within 30 h. Owing to the flexible kapok fibers as supporting layer of PCM, the PCM possesses good mechanical properties and could be prepared without limitation in size and shape on a large scale under mild conditions, thus showing great potential for practical applications of microplastic removal and PM capture.