Abstract:
Amidoxime-functionalized SiO
2/polyvinyl alcohol(SiO
2/PVA) nanofiber adsorbent was prepared by electrospinning technique. The composite SiO
2/PVA nanofibers was analyzed by SEM, FTIR, DSC and TGA.The nanofiber adsorbent was also evaluated for mental ions adsorption capacity.The results indicate that the highest adsorption occurs at pH=6 and the adsorption capacity can be 143.7 mg/g and 125.1 mg/g for Cu
2+ and Ni
2+, respectively. The composite SiO
2/PVA nanofibers can remove almost 90% aforementioned ions from aqueous solutions within 50 min. The kinetic data were analyzed by the pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetic model, the kinetic process is found to fit the pseudo-second-order equation and the adsorption isotherm data fit well the Langmuir isothermal model. Furthermore, HNO
3 is found to be effective in regenerating the adsorbent and 53% of the metal ions are removal from the aqueous even in the fourth regeneration/reuse cycle, which imply that the nanofibers can be suitable for water treatment as adsorbent.