Synthesis, characterization and method development studies of a molecularly imprinted polymer for the extraction of 2, 4, 6-trinitrotoluene

Abstract

A novel molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) was synthesized to be used as a highly selective and specific sorbent for solid phase extraction (SPE) of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). TNT-MIP was prepared by using 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) as template, methacrylic acid (MAA) as the functional monomer and ethylene glycol dimethylacrylate (EGDMA) as the cross-linker using the non-covalent approach. Nonimprinted polymer (NIP) was prepared under the similar approach but in the absence of a template as a reference for evaluating the performance of MIP. The resulting polymer monoliths were ground and sieved to obtain sizes in the range of 25-38 μm and incorporated as SPE sorbent. Their extraction performance were analysed using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) equipped with UV detector at 254 nm.