Facile fabrication of chitosan-based adsorbents for effective removal of cationic and anionic dyes from aqueous solutions

Abstract To develop chitosan-based adsorbents for the treatment of dye wastewater, poly acrylic acid (PAA) and poly acrylamide (PAM) were simultaneously grafted onto the chitosan (CTS) chain to obtain a grafted-crosslinked material g-CCTS, and then, Fe-g-CCTS was prepared via coordination of Fe(III) onto the prepared g-CCTS. Two adsorbents g-CCTS and Fe-g-CCTS were fully characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), Nitrogen adsorption and desorption, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and thermogravimetric (TG) analysis. In adsorption experiment, g-CCTS exhibited effective adsorption towards cationic dye methylene blue (MB), and Fe-g-CCTS showed effective adsorption towards anionic dye reactive brilliant red (RBR). The effects of solution pH, salt concentration and temperature on the adsorption process were investigated. The maximum adsorption capacity of g-CCTS for MB was up to 79.09 mg/g at pH 12, and that of Fe-g-CCTS for RBR reached 918.53 mg/g at pH 2. It was observed that both adsorption processes were monolayer adsorption, and conformed to the pseudo-second-order model and the Langmuir isotherm model. This research provided a facile and accurate method for effective dyes removal from wastewater.