Synthesis of polyamine-grafted chitosan and its adsorption behavior

The development of new environment-friendly and efficient adsorbents has attracted a great interest in recent years. In this study, ethylene diamine-grafted chitosan copolymer (CS–MAA–EN) and triethylene tetramine-grafted chitosan copolymer (CS–MAA–TN) were synthesized to remove heavy metal ions from water. The influence of pH, adsorbents dosage and initial metal concentration were investigated to study the adsorbing effect of CS–MAA–EN and CS–MAA–TN for the removal of Cu 2+ from aqueous solutions. The equilibrium adsorption capacities of CS–MAA–EN and CS–MAA–TN were 85.91 and 102.67 mg/g, respectively. The adsorption process was fitted better by the Langmuir isotherm model ( R 2  = 0.9993, 0.9991) than the Freundlich isotherm model ( R 2  = 0.8781, 0.8775). The adsorption kinetics confirmed that the adsorption mechanism could be better described by the pseudo-second-order equation. Two adsorbents showed excellent desorption efficiency ( D e ) and reuse ratio ( R u ). D e and R u of CS–MAA–EN were evaluated as 95.2 and 89.35 %, respectively, and those values of CS–MAA–TN were 92.73 and 83.25 %. The competitive adsorption results of the two adsorbents indicated that the rate sequence was Fe 3+  > Cu 2+  > Cr 6+  > Ni 2+  > Zn 2+ .