Synthesis and characterization of ion imprinted polymer for selective separation of Cd(II)

Abstract

Cadmium become one of toxic heavy metals that can be dangerous for human lives. At very low concentration, cadmium cannot be determined by instrument easily. Ion Imprinted Polymer (IIP) is used to recognize and separating heavy metal ion that works with trapping method in polymer matrices that are crosslinked with chelating agent. In this research, IIP via bulk polymerization with cadmium ion as template, 8-Hydroxyquinoline as ligand, methyl methacrylate as functional monomer, EGDMA as Crosslinker, and AIBN as Initiator was successfully synthesized. The effect of ratio of ligand and monomer (1:1, 1:2, 1:3) to IIP was studied. The synthesized IIP was characterized by AAS, FTIR, SEM, and TGA. Adsorption capacity of IIP reach optimum capacity at pH 6 with 60 minutes contact time. IIP with ratio 1:2 has the adsorption mechanism of both IIP and NIP followed to the Freundlich equation with R2 0.9214 and maximum adsorption capacity of Cd(II) was 335.58 mg/g for IIP and 105.46 mg/g for NIP respectively. Furthermore the kinetics model followed the pseudo first order with R2 0.9722, this results show that the adsorption mechanism took place on initial time of adsorption. IIP exhibited good selectivity to Cd2+ ions in the presence of Pb2+ and Cr3+ interferences.