Release of wastewater from different industrial sectors including textile, metal processing, dye manufacturing and mining has resulted in the contamination of freshwater with dyes and heavy metals. Development of simple and effective approaches for the rapid removal of such toxic pollutants from contaminated water is highly demanded. In the present study, a novel adsorbent, β-cyclodextrin-graphene oxide nanocomposite (β-CD-GO) was prepared by a facile synthesis route. The GO was synthesized at room temperature by oxidizing graphite with KMnO4 and concentrated H2SO4. The synthesis of GO was modified to prevent the release of toxic NOx gases and to minimize the release of acidic residue into the environment by omitting the conventional addition of NaNO3 (Hummers method) and H3PO4 (Tours method), respectively. The addition of homogeneously dispersed GO into the basic solution (pH=10) of β-CD at the mass ratio of 1:1 resulted in the synthesis of the β-CD-GO nanocomposite. Detailed characterization of the synthesized GO and β-CD-GO has been done using atomic force microscopy (AFM), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-vis spectroscopy, fourier transformation infrared spectroscopic (FTIR), scanning electron microscopic (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The batch experiment was conducted at room temperature for 3h to analyze the adsorption efficiency of β-CD-GO on two different environmental contaminants such as cationic dye methylene blue (MB) and Cd (II). The adsorption efficiency towards MB was observed to be 99.9%, 99.9% and 99.8% at the initial concentrations of 5 ppm, 50 ppm, and 100 ppm, respectively. Similarly, the adsorption efficiency towards Cd(II) was 99.16%, 98.96% and 82.8% at the initial concentrations of 5 ppm, 25 ppm and 50 ppm, respectively. The recycling of β-CD-GO showed no reduction in the adsorption efficiency up to three adsorption-desorption cycles. The present study aims to develop the novel adsorbent β-CD-GO nanocomposite which could be potentiality used in the future to treat wastewater contaminated with dyes and heavy metals.

Synthesis of novel adsorbent β-cyclodextrin-graphene oxide nanocomposite (β-CD-GO) for the potentially enhanced removal of dyes and heavy metals from wastewater

255th National Meeting (2018)

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