Sorption studies of divalent ions onto ternary beads of alginate, chitosan and carboxymethyl cellulose

Abstract

The potential of sodium alginate (AL)/ chitosan (CS)/ carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) beads as an adsorbent for removing the divalent metal ions such as Cu (II) and Ni (II) ions from aqueous solution was assessed in the current work using a batch adsorption technique. FT-IR and XRD measurements were used to investigate the formation of the ternary beads. The percentage removal of metal ions was investigated in batch mode as a function of metal ion solution pH, initial metal ion concentration, adsorbent dosage, and contact time. The observed outcome shows that the best pH for removing both metal ions was reported to be 5.0. The incorporation of experimental data in theoretical modelling exhibits that the adsorption would be multilayer through pseudo-second order (R² > 0.9) kinetics. The removal efficiency of ternary beads reveals that copper ions (C_max = 203.69 mg/g) were removed better than nickel ions (C_max = 194.05 mg/g).