Synthesis of chelating polyamine fibers and their adsorption properties for nickel(II) ions from aqueous solution

Abstract

A novel fiber supported adsorbent PVAF-g-PEI was first developed by grafting polyethylenimine on polyvinyl alcohol fibers (PVAF). In order to increase the nickel(ii) adsorption capacity of PVAF-g-PEI, they were chemically modified with amine-rich reagent tetraethylenepentamine by using a crosslinker, glutaraldehyde (GA). The effect of grafting reaction parameters was investigated. The prepared fiber sorbent PA-PVAF was characterized by using FT-IR, SEM, XPS and element analysis and used for the adsorption of nickel(ii) from aqueous solutions. The factors influencing nickel(ii) adsorption on PA-PVAF, such as contact time, solution pH, temperature and ionic strength, were also studied. At pH 7.0, the sorption capacity of PA-PVAF was 91.03 mg g-1 for nickel(ii). The Langmuir isotherm model precisely explained the equilibrium data. Adsorbent-adsorbate kinetics were pseudo second order. Meanwhile, the adsorption-desorption cycle experiments showed that PA-PVAF had good reuse performance.