The extensive rise in industrial activities has led to the presence of heavy metals, many dyes, and various pollutants in industrial wastewater effluents. From all the technologies available for treating the wastewater, adsorption is found to be the most economically feasible and easily operated technology. Different adsorbents such as activated carbon, different types of zeolites, bio-polymers, clays and various nano composites have been used in removing impurities from water. However, toxicity, recyclability, scaling up and selectivity of these adsorbents are some key challenges yet to be addressed when using these adsorbents on an industrial scale. Therefore, development of sustainable and green adsorbents with minimized cross-contamination of the feed water, which have high selectivity towards certain contaminants is crucial. Recently, novel mussel-inspired material as polydopamine (PDA) has emerged as an efficient adsorbent for water treatment by adsorption technology. However, the adsorption capacity of PDA alone is low compared to other adsorbents which meet indusial demands. Therefore, it is crucial to increase the adsorptive capacity of PDA to be useful on industrial scale and help to utilize all of its functional groups without deterioration in adsorption. One possible route for developing PDA with high adsorption capacity is to modify the adsorbent via Schiff-based addition reaction with sustainable green solvent such as ionic liquids (ILs). This work will be focused on developing novel and highly selective mussel-inspired Green and Sustainable Adsorbents (MIGSA) using PDA mediated IL. This research work focuses on studying dependence of adsorption capacity and selectivity for specific pollutants, which is controlled by both surface area and surface functional groups of new adsorbents. In this work, a task specific IL was used in the production of novel MIGSA adsorbent from DA via mussel-inspired enabled Schiff-base addition approach. Synthesis methodology has been optimized based on reaction time, temperature, weight % of DA and TSIL, and degree of functionalization. Bio-inspired PDA-IL would be a novel type of adsorbents, which will have a tremendous potential for removing heavy metals, nitrates, phosphates, sulphates, and toxic dyes from aqueous solutions and wastewater. Moreover, in addition to the strong adhesive abilities of PDA, by altering the cation and anion of ILs different contaminates can be selectively removed from wastewater.

Mussel inspired green and sustainable adsorbents (MIGSA) for selective removal of heavy metals, anionic pollutants and dyes from wastewater

ACS Fall 2021

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