PREPARATION OF CHITOSAN/POLY VINYL ALCOHOL HYDROGEL CROSSLINKED BY GLYOXAL TOWARDS APPLICATIONS IN THE REMOVAL OF COPPER (II) IONS FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTIONS

Abstract

Recently, hydrogels have been utilized as effective adsorbents to remove heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions. In this study, the composite hydrogels based on chitosan and poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) crosslinked by glyoxal were conducted towards the application of removing copper ions from water. The specific functional groups of chitosan and PVA molecules were revealed by Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The swelling property of the composite was investigated and had the highest value of 850%. In addition, the ability of hydrogel to remove copper ions from aqueous solution was evaluated through the experiments supported by UV vis equipment. The Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm model could fit the data of the experiment. And the hydrogel with 10%wt glyoxal had maximum copper ion absorption with 183 mg.g^-1 at pH 7.