Synthesis and Characterization of Non-Surfactant Mesoporous Chitosan/Silica Composite Sorbent and its Purification of Sugarcane Juice Bioresources

Mesoporous chitosan-silica composite sorbent has been successfully synthesized by a simple and facile template-free hydrolyzing route from single cheap silica precursor of sodium silicate. The overall decolorization efficiency and capacity for sugar juice between pure chitosan and composite sorbent are very close in field pilot-scale, while much lower quantity of chitosan (only 10 wt.%) is used to build the composite sorbent. The success of increased purification performance and sorption capacity of sugar juice is ascribed to the appropriate pore structure of the composite sorbent with high surface area (395 m2/g), large pore size (7.73×10-9 m) and high percentage of accessible free amine groups of chitosan (70 %).