May 18th, 2015

Fantastic sorption capacity, high mechanical strength and the ability to be reused are among the advantages of the produced nanosorbent.
The application of nanostructured sorbents, including graphene in solid phase extraction processes, creates high back pressure during the pass of solvent through the columns containing sorbents. Therefore, one of the approaches is the application of magnetic sorbents instead of filling the extraction column with the sorbent. In addition, if iron oxide nanoparticles are used solely, they create accumulation and their specific area and superparamagentic properties decrease. Modification of the surface of magnetic nanoparticles by using modifiers is an appropriate solution to prevent their accumulation.
Conductive polymers are among the effective modifiers. Polythiophene (PT) has high potential to be used in the solid phase extraction processes due to its properties such as high resistance to temperature, air, humidity and various solvents. In this research, polythiophene was used to overcome the probable problem of decreasing adsorption sites of magnetic graphene due to the presence of Fe3O4 particles on the surface of graphene.
This composite nanosorbent has very high efficiency in the extraction of few cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from aqueous media.
Production of the proposed composite nanosorbents is relatively cheap in comparison with the existing commercial sorbents. Therefore, they can be produced at a large scale after carrying out environmental evaluations to eliminate few cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other organic or inorganic pollutants in aqueous media.