Among the vast number of water contaminants under concern, soluble arsenic anions are an important issue for groundwater consumption. The health problems associated with their pollution range from short-term symptoms, as diarrhea and skin damages, to long-term ones, such as skin cancer.  Magnetite nanoparticles arise as a promising material for arsenic remediation due to their large surface area and high affinity of arsenate and arsenite for iron oxides. Here we report the effect of charge coating polymer and nanoparticle aggregation on arsenic removal efficiency from water. The materials synthesis followed two different methods: coprecipitation, resulting in large aggregates of magnetite, and the thermal decomposition, producing individual and near monodisperse particles (figure 1). While the former was coated with PEG, the later was made water-soluble using PEG, PEI or PAA coating. All of these samples were used for arsenic adsorption tests in three different [As], as shown in figure 2.

Effect of coating polymer and aggregation of magnetite nanoparticles on arsenic removal from water

247th National Meeting (2014)

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