Polymeric sorbent, preparation and use thereof

A method of producing a polymer sorbent, the method including the following steps:

• polymerizing or co-polymerizing of one or more monomers by mixing said one or more monomers with at least one polymeric amphiphilic compound and at least one porogen, and adding to a resulting mixture at least one polymerization initiator during constant mixing;
• separating pellets obtained in result of the polymerizing from the dispersion media;
• cross-linking the polymerized pellets with a cross-linking agent in a thermodynamically suitable solvent in the presence of a catalyst;
• rinsing the resulting hypercrosslinked polymer pellets to remove the monomer residue, polymerization initiator residue, cross-linking agent residue and catalyst residue, and
• drying the resulting sorbent,
• characterized in that the separating the polymerized pellets from the dispersion media is carried out by filtering, rinsing the separated pellets with hot water having a temperature ranged from 60° C. to 70° C. at a volume ratio pellets:water ranged from 1:1 to 1:4, then rinsing the pellets with cold water having a temperature ranged from 18° C. to 23° C. at a volume ratio pellets:water ranged from 1:1 to 1:4), then rinsing with acetone at volume ratio pellets:acetone ranged from 1:1 to 1:4 to remove the monomer residue, and rinsing with water until the water reaches a pH of 6 to 7, then the rinsed pellets are dried at 20° C. to 80° C. and cross-linked by the cross-linking agent,
• wherein said one or more monomers are selected from the group comprising:
• styrene;
• divinylbenzene;
• a mixture of styrene and divinylbenzene;
• a mixture of styrene and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate;
• a mixture of vinyltoluene and divinylbenzene;
• a mixture of styrene and divinylbenzene, further containing up to 10 vol. % of at least one monomer selected from the group comprising:
• N-vinylpyrrolidone, 1-vinylimidazole, allyl glycidyl ether, based on a total volume of the monomer mixture.