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Development of reusable chitosan-supported nickel sulfide microspheres for environmentally friendlier and efficient bio-sorptive decontamination of mercury toxicant

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Abstract 

Mercury emissions from the industrial sector have become an undeniable concern for researchers due to their toxic health effects. Efforts have been made to develop green, efficient, and reliable methods for removal of mercury from wastewater. Sorption process promises fruitful results for the decontamination of cations from wastewater. Among the number of used sorbents, metal sulfides have been emerged as an appropriate material for removing toxic metals that possess good affinity due to sulfur-based active sites for Hg through “Lewis’s acid-based soft–soft interactions.” Herein, nickel-sulfide nanoparticles were synthesized, followed by their incorporation in chitosan microspheres. FTIR analysis confirmed the synthesis of nickel sulfide-chitosan microspheres (NiS-CMs) displaying sharp bands for multiple functional groups. XRD analysis showed that the NiS-CMs possessed a crystallite size of 42.1 nm. SEM analysis indicated the size of NiS-CMs to be 950.71 μm based on SEM micrographs. The sorption of mercury was performed using the NiS-CMs, and the results were satisfactory, with a sorption capacity of 61 mg/g at the optimized conditions of pH 5.0, 80 ppm concentration, in 60 min at 25 °C. Isothermal models and kinetics studies revealed that the process followed pseudo-second-order kinetics and the Langmuir isothermal model best fitted to experimental data. It was concluded that the NiS-CMs have emerged as the best choice for removing toxic mercury ions with a positive impact on the environment.

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Funding

The research leading to these results has received funding from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014–2021 under the Project number 2020/37/K/ST8/03805.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacy and Traditional Chinese Pharmacy, Jiangsu College of Nursing, Huaian, Jiangsu, 223005, People’s Republic of China

    Yonghong Han & Juan Tao

  2. Institute of Chemical Sciences, University of Peshawar, Peshawar-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 25120, Pakistan

    Adnan Khan, Afrasiab Khan & Sumeet Malik

  3. Key Laboratory for Palygorskite Science and Applied Technology of Jiangsu Province, National & Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Mineral Salt Deep Utilization, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huai’an, 223003, China

    Nisar Ali

  4. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Regional Resource Exploitation and Medicinal Research, Department of Pharmaceutical Engineering, Faculty of Chemical Engineering, National & Local Joint Engineering Research Center for Mineral Salt Deep Utilization, Huaiyin Institute of Technology, Huaian, 223003, China

    Chunhao Yu & Yong Yang

  5. Institute of Chemical Technology and Engineering, Faculty of Chemical Technology, Poznan University of Technology, Berdychowo 4, 60695, Poznan, Poland

    Teofil Jesionowski & Muhammad Bilal

Authors
  1. Yonghong Han
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  10. Muhammad Bilal
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Contributions

YH, JT, AK: conceptualization, data analysis and curation, project administration, supervision, validation, writing—original draft, review and editing. AK, SM: investigation, methodology, data analysis and curation. NA: co-supervision, conceptualization. AK: validation, writing—review and editing. CY, YY: data analysis, writing—review and editing. TJ: formal analysis, writing—review and editing. MB: data analysis, software, visualization, validation, writing—review and editing, supervision.

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Correspondence to Yonghong Han.

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Han, Y., Tao, J., Khan, A. et al. Development of reusable chitosan-supported nickel sulfide microspheres for environmentally friendlier and efficient bio-sorptive decontamination of mercury toxicant. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 47077–47089 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24563-8

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