All-Polymer Solid Desiccant With High Moisture Capture Capacity and Fast Sorption Kinetics

Desiccants play crucial importance in both daily life and industrial production. The development of low-cost and easy industrial scale production all-polymer solid desiccants with high water adsorption capacity, low regeneration temperature, and fast sorption kinetics remains great challenges. Herein, we report a novel all-polymer porous solid desiccant (APPSD) with high moisture capture capacity, low regeneration temperature, and fast sorption kinetics via a new zero-waste, eco-friendly, and easily scaled-up process. The present APPSD could adsorb 0.8 g/g water vapor at 70% relative humidity (RH) within 1.5 h, and 1.9 g/g at 90% RH within 2.0 h at 25°C, exhibiting fast adsorption kinetics. The equilibrium moisture adsorptive capacity is as high as 2.16 g/g at 90% RH and 25°C, much higher than most reported solid polymer desiccants without hygroscopic salts under the same conditions. Amazingly, more than 92% of the absorbed water could be released at 40°C and 20% RH within 30 min, demonstrating extreme low regeneration temperature and high regeneration efficiency. Furthermore, almost no performance decline was observed during a 20-cycle adsorption–desorption measurement, showing excellent recycling stability. Graphical A novel all-polymer porous solid desiccant (APPSD) with high moisture capture capacity and fast sorption kinetics was developed via a zero-waste, eco-friendly, and easily scaled-up process. The APPSD was prepared by free-radical solution copolymerization using N 2 as an inert shielding gas and porogen, and polymerizable macromolecular surfactant as a foaming stabilizer and cross-linker.