Selective Determination of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene in Water Samples Based on Magnetic Imprinted Nanoparticles via Grafting Polymerization

The magnetic surface imprinted polymer was effectively synthesized based on grafting polymerization for selective determination of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) as template molecule. The "grafting to" procedure was performed by copolymerizing of vinyl modified magnetic substrate with methacrylic acid (MAA) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as functional monomer and cross-linking agent, respectively. The morphology, structure and polymeric properties of imprinting polymers were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). In order to improve on the adsorption capacity amount, the various parameters were considered. The resulting sorbent exhibited a high capacity with appropriate selectivity for TNT molecules. The evaluation demonstrated a linear range of 10-500 mu g L-1 with the detection limit of 3.0 mu g L-1. Moreover, the performance of the present sorbent was studied for extraction and determination of TNT compound in environmental waters and acceptable recoveries ranging from 91.7 to 100.8% were achieved.