The Study of Impedance and Conductivity of New Modified Polystyrene Used as an Effective Adsorbent of Ba(II) Ions

In the research described here we prepared a novel, modified polystyrene (PS) with iminoether as the complexing agent for Ba2+ . Most heavy metals cause environmental, atmospheric pollution.[1-2] They cause consequence for humans health and aquatic life due to their toxicity. They become strongly toxic by mixing with different environmental elements and their removal from contaminated water is very important. The structure of all modified polystyrene such as nitrated polystyrene (PS-NO2 ), aminated polystyrene (PS-NH2 ), aminated polystyrene with imidate group (PS-NH-Im) and the complex with barium metal (PS-NH-Im/Ba2+ ) were analyzed by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and the formation of N-2-Benzimidazolyl iminoether grafted PS was proved. The thermal stability and structure of the polystyrene and modified polystyrene were studied by differential thermal analysis (DTA) and X-ray diffractometry (XRD), respectively. The elemental analysis was used for the determination of the chemical composition of the modified PS. The grafted polystyrene was used in order to adsorb barium from wastewater with an acceptable cost before the wastewater distribution in the environment. The impedance analysis of the polystyrene complex PS-NH-Im/Ba2+ indicated an activated thermal conduction mechanism.The conductivity analysis of the complex with barium metal PS-NH-Im/Ba2+ was studied; the activation energy was deduced from an Arrhenius plot and corresponded to, Ea=0.85eV${{{\rm E}}_{{\rm a}}=0.85\hskip0.17em\hskip0.17em{\rm e}{\rm V}}$ , suggesting PS-NH-Im/Ba2+ was a proton-type of semiconductor.