Polluted waters are a growing problem affecting vast groups of people throughout the world. The use of adsorbents is still the most cost-effective method to remove these pollutants and recent research efforts have focused on finding ecofriendly and sustainable adsorbents. In this work we report the development of a multi-functional adsorbent composite prepared from glycerol-derived carbon nanoparticles and polysaccharide chitosan. The carbon nanoparticles were prepared through a one-step acidic dehydration of glycerol and found to contain many functional groups such as sulfonic, carboxylic acid, and hydroxyl groups. These were then combined with chitosan using several methods to form composite materials that ranged from lyophilized sponges to simple coatings on sand and adsorbent paper. The carbon/chitosan composite materials were characterized using techniques that included infrared spectroscopy (IR), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The carbon nanoparticles were found to serve as a versatile crosslinking agent for chitosan in the composite. Given that chitosan is a cationic electrolyte and that the carbon nanoparticles are anionic due to the sulfonic acid groups, a multi-functional adsorbent could be prepared through simply varying the amount of the two components. The mechanism of dye adsorption was investigated and found to be mainly electrostatic showing a high adsorption capacity toward heavy metal ions, and both cationic and anionic dyes.

Engineered carbon nanoparticle /chitosan composite materials as multi-functional and tunable adsorbents for water purification

ACS Spring 2022

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