Fabrication of magnetic imprinted sorbents prepared by Pickering emulsion polymerization for adsorption of erythromycin from aqueous solution

Abstract In this work, erythromycin-based (EM-based) magnetic molecularly imprinted polymers (MMIPs) were prepared by magnetic eggshells-stabilized Pickering emulsion imprinting polymerization. The feature of easy separation caused by good magnetism made the product separation and adsorption process more time-saving and convenient. More importantly and interestingly, the magnetic eggshell particles were not prepared beforehand, but were found to form instantly and spontaneously in water phase. The magnetic eggshell particles created in this way were used as stabilizers of emulsion polymerization for the first time, which may be benefit for the preservation of magnetism of MMIPs. The imprinting process was conducted by radical polymerization and the MMIPs was characterize by various characterization methods such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM). The results sufficiently demonstrated the formation of the approximately spherical and wrinkled magnetic imprinted polymers. A series of adsorption experiments showed that the as-prepared MMIPs exhibited not only outstanding adsorption capacities, but also excellent selective adsorption effect toward EM molecules, and the adsorption mechanism were also discussed in detail with different adsorption models.