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Amine-functionalized cellulose nanofiber-sodium alginate-Fe(III) porous hollow beads for the efficient removal of Cr(VI)

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Abstract

To date, highly toxic heavy metal ions from wastewater seriously deteriorate the aquatic environment safety. This study proposes an adsorbent that can be adopted to remove heavy metal ions by combining environmentally friendly cellulose nanofibers (CNFs), sodium alginate (SA), and amino-rich polyethyleneimine using a ferric chloride- and glutaraldehyde-mediated crosslinking process and yielding a porous hollow bead (CS-Fe@PEI). The bead has a hollow porous structure according to SEM and a high nitrogen content of 13.85 wt% with numerous active adsorption sites, which are beneficial to the adsorption of heavy metal ions. Chromium was chosen as the main model pollutant for batch adsorption experiments. CS-Fe@PEI has excellent adsorption capacity of 526.32 mg/g for Cr(VI) at 298 K, which conforms with the Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-order model. The stable hollow structure allowed the regeneration of the CS-Fe@PEI beads for more than six cycles after Cr(VI) adsorption. According to FT-IR, Zeta, and XPS analyses, the beads effectively adsorbed the pollutants by electrostatic interaction, reducing the hypertoxic Cr(VI) to Cr(III). Furthermore, the beads also possessed a superior adsorption capacity for heavy metal cations (Cu(II), Cd(II), Ni(II), and Pb(II)). These results demonstrated that the fabricated CS-Fe@PEI beads were an efficient and reusable adsorbent, with a high potential for removing heavy metal ions from industrial wastewater.

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Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 51563004 and 22205134) and the Foundation of Guilin University of Technology (GLUTQD2002029)

Funding

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 51563004) and the Foundation of Guilin University of Technology (GLUTQD2002029). Yijun Xie acknowledges National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No: 22205134).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Guilin University of Technology (GUT), Guilin, 541004, China

    Zhaoxing Hu, Jinyan Yang, Mengxin Liu, Wenhui Rao & Chuanbai Yu

  2. Institute of Nanochemistry and Nanobiology, School of Environmental and Chemical Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Yijun Xie

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  1. Zhaoxing Hu
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  2. Jinyan Yang
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  4. Wenhui Rao
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Contributions

ZH conceptualization, formal analysis, methodology, writing-original draft. JY sinvestigation, validation. ML data curation, material characterization. WR project administration. YX writing-review & editing. CY resources, funding acquisition, supervision, writing- review & editing.

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Correspondence to Yijun Xie or Chuanbai Yu.

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We declare that we do not have any financial or personal relationships with other individuals or organizations that may have undue influence on this work. All procedures carried out in studies involving human participants comply with the ethical standards of institutional and/or national research councils, as well as the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its subsequent amendments or similar ethical standards. This article does not contain any animal studies conducted by the authors.

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Hu, Z., Yang, J., Liu, M. et al. Amine-functionalized cellulose nanofiber-sodium alginate-Fe(III) porous hollow beads for the efficient removal of Cr(VI). Cellulose 30, 3807–3822 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-023-05123-w

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