Towards Novel Adsorbents: The Ratio of PVA/chitosan Blended Hydrogels on the Copper (II) Ion Adsorption

Recently, the one of most environments problems is a heavy metal contamination in water therefore it is very important to remove these metal before discharging to environment. In this work, the efficacy of Cu (II) adsorption on the polymer hydrogel blends of poly(vinyl alcohol) and chitosan (PVA/CS), at various polymer compositions, from the aqueous solution was investigated. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used for verify the chemical structure of polymer hydrogels. Water absorbency of the polymer hydrogel films was investigated by water swelling ratio measurement. We found that the PVA/CS were crosslinked by using glutaraldehyde, and the PVA/CS hydrogel at the ratio of 100/0 highly showed the water swelling ratio due to the PVA has highly hydrophilicity property. In addition, the adsorption capacity of the Cu (II) ion on the PVA/CS hydrogel adsorbents were investigated. All of samples showed good adsorption capacity, the efficacy of adsorption depend on the composition of polymer hydrogel. Increasing adsorption capacity with increasing the CS content within the network. Finally, the kinetic of adsorption also was studied. It was found that the pseudo-second-order kinetic, having up to 1.00 of a correlation coefficient, is best described the adsorption process of this adsorbent.