Synthesis, Characterization, and Potential Evaluation of Modified Cellulose Immobilized with Hydroxyquinoline as a Sorbent for Vanadium Ions

Abstract A considerable increase in the importance of vanadium globally and its common uses in many manufacturable alloys made it a target for much scientific research interested in extraction and recovery. A solid modified cellulose sorbent (GCIHQ) was prepared by simple grafting of cellulose, then immobilized with hydroxyquinoline, and examined as a sorbent for V(V) ions. FT-IR, TGA, BET, and SEM–EDX investigations were used to characterize the GCIHQ. A higher surface area for the synthesized GCIHQ resin has been recorded (65.8 m 2 /g) more than the used cellulose (21.7m 2 /g). Several vanadium sorption parameters using the modified GCIHQ from the sulfate medium were optimized namely contact time, pH, initial vanadium ions concentration, sorbent dose, and sorption temperature. The kinetics results revealed that the sorption of vanadium ions upon the synthesized sorbent followed the pseudo-second-order with R 2 of > 0.99, which indicated that the sorption mechanism was chemical interaction. The sorption process was studied using Freundlich, Langmuir, Dubinin–Radushkevich, and Temkin isotherm models to describe the adsorbent-adsorbate interaction. The Langmuir model was the most fitting model with the experimental results; the experimental adsorption uptake of 113 mg/g was matched with that of the calculated results. The activation energy (E a ) for adsorption was 12.91 kJ.mol −1 , indicating the process is to be chemisorption. Thermodynamic characteristics with ΔH of 13.46 kJ/mol and a ΔS 115.15 J/mol.K revealed the endothermic and spontaneous nature.