Synthesis of Moleculary Imprinted Polymer Originated from TFMAA and TRIM for Sterol Separation

Abstract

Molecular imprinted polymer (MIP) was synthesized bulk polymerization using 2-(trifluoromethyl)acrylic acid (TFMAA) as a functional monomer, trimethylolpropane trimethacrylate (TRIM) as a cross-linker, benzoyl peroxide as an initiator, acetone as porogen solvent, and stigmasterol as template molecule to obtain adsorbent having high affinity and selectivity to stigmasterol for separation of stigmasterol or other sterols in liquid phase. Functional groups and the morphology of the obtained MIP were investigated by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and scanning electron microscope (SEM), respectively. The performance in sterol adsorption of MIPs synthesized under various conditions was investigated using a model solution of sterol mixture in n-heptane with initial concentration of 1.40×10-4 kg/kg-solution comparing with non-imprinted polymer (NIP). Adsorbent (1 wt%) was added to model solution and shaken in an orbital shaker at 3.67 rps, 303 K for 2.16×104 s. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) suggested that the cross-linker was more influential factor on the adsorption performance of MIP as compared to the template molecule and solvent. The optimization showed that MIP synthesized at 0.5×10-3 mol of cross-linker, 1.0×10-4 mol of template molecule, and 1.0×10-5 m3 of solvent had highest percentage adsorption of 57.73 % which was 1.37 times of NIP.