REMOVAL OF TRACE QUANTITIES OF NICKEL FROM SOLUTION

Chitosan, which is produced from the natural polymer chitin, is a much more efficient scavenger of nickel ion than other natural ion exchange materials tested. An industrial waste containing about 7 ppm Ni2+ and 10,000 ppm Na+ was reduced to less than 0.1 ppm Ni2+ by contact in a packed column of chitosan. Capacity of the chitosan substrate under these conditions was a little more than 1 meq/g. The substrate can be regenerated by contact with buffered NH4Cl at pH 10. The high sodium content of the nickel waste did not prevent sorption of Ni2+, but it apparently produced an interference with atomic absorption spectrophotometer analyses, giving a spurious reading of 0.8 ppm Ni2+ when the major nickel line at 232 nm was used for analysis. Copyright © 1979 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.