Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology

Abstract

Adsorption Characteristics of Copper (II) Ions from Aqueous Solution onto Ionic Cross-linked Pva/P(Aam-Nipaam) Core-shell Nanogels

Ali Ali Sarhan, Magda Ali Akl and Kamal Razaq

Core-shell nanogels adsorbent were investigated for copper (II) removal from aqueous solution, consisting of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) core and poly(acrylamide- N-isopropylacrylamide/) p(AAm-NIPAm) shell particles. Various factors affecting the adsorption capacity, such as swelling, pH, time, initial ion concentration, and different metal ions on the metal ion binding capacity for nanogel, was also tested. The selectivity of the nanogels toward the different metal ions tested was Cu2+> Ni2+ > Pb2+. The results show that the adsorption of nanogels mainly depends on pH, and the maximum adsorption was obtained at a pH of 6.0. The adsorption capacity of Cu+2 was 126 mg/g obtained under simple and fast experimental conditions, the effect of different mole ratios of p(AAm-NIPAm) shells thickness were synthesized, to determine the maximum metal uptake. The core-shell nanogels were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and transmission electron microscope (TEM). It was found that adsorbed Cu+2 ions on PVA/p(AAm-NIPAm) nanogels can be effectively desorbed by acid stripping with 0.1 mol/L HCl resulted in 96% Cu+2 recovery for the nanogels; this shows the ability of the nanogels to be reused, upon drying between treatments. The nanogels adsorbent can be regenerated after releasing of Cu+2 and reused three times effectively. All the experimental result exhibited good matches with the Freundlich isotherm and followed pseudo-second-order kinetics. The mechanism of adsorption of Cu+2 onto PVA/p(AAm-NIPAm) nanogels is proposed.