Sustainable high-performance amine functionalized waste cotton adsorbents for polar VOCs removal

Valorization of waste cotton textiles into functional materials mitigate textile waste pollution, yet most reported cellulose-based adsorbents from textile waste are limited to aqueous-phase pollutant treatment, while their potential for capturing gaseous polar acidicVOCs remains underexplored. Here, we construct an amine-enriched adsorbent with a tailored surface affinity by grafting amine-rich polymeric chains onto a cotton-derived cellulosic scaffold. Using acetic acid as a model VOC, the modified material exhibits a saturation adsorption capacity of 5.33 mg/g, approximately 1.7-fold higher than pristine cotton, with suppressed release rate and robust regeneration stability (>90% removal after five cycles). IGC and DFT analyses reveal that PEI grafting increases the specific surface area and introduces strong Lewis-basic sites, which enhancing acid–base interactions with acidic VOCs. This work provides a feasible upcycling strategy for waste cotton and offers new mechanistic insights into designing textile-derived adsorbents for polar acidic VOC capture.