Publication Date:
2020-02-06
Description:
Highlights:
• Chitosan constitutes a good polymer for iron oxide immobilization.
• Sorption properties of iron oxides are not inhibited by chitosan coating.
• Hybrid materials present good mechanical properties for water pollution treatment.
• Arsenic can be efficiently removed using cost-effective hybrid polymeric materials.
Abstract
Red mud (RM), a waste product generated in the industrial production of aluminium, was recovered for a second use as As(V) adsorbent. RM adsorption properties were compared to those obtained with a nanostructured in-lab synthesized iron oxide, magnetite. Operational problems associated with powdery consistency of raw materials were solved with the synthesis of new polymeric/inorganic hybrid sorbents by dispersing red mud and magnetite in chitosan. The behaviour of raw red mud and magnetite towards As(V) adsorption has been critically compared with that observed for the hybrid materials. pH dependence studies demonstrated that near neutral environments favour As(V) elimination. The sorption kinetics for the iron oxides showed that equilibrium was reached in less than 3 h for raw materials and up to 15 h for immobilized red mud and magnetite. The amount of arsenic sorbed on the four different sorbents as a function of the equilibrium arsenic concentration has been fitted to a Freundlich isotherm and a multilayer adsorption mechanism is proposed. Finally, continuous flow experiments were developed using chitosan immobilized red mud. Results allowed selecting batch conformation as the most effective for As(V) removal.
Type:
Article
,
PeerReviewed
Format:
text
Format:
text
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