Grafting of Amine functional group on silicate based material as adsorbent for water purification: A short review

Over the last decade, adsorption has exhibited promising and effective outcome as a treatment technic for water and also for wastewater contaminated with many types of pollutants such as metals, dyes, pharmaceutical products in solutions. To achieve such effectiveness, a number of efficient adsorbents have been synthesized and applied in the process. In recent years, significant efforts have been achieved in the development of highly efficient adsorbent materials. However, despite these achievements, researchers are now focused on developing the materials that are non-toxic, cost effective and efficient at the same time. Among the most well-known adsorbents, activated carbon is the most popular, due to its excellent adsorption characteristic, porous structure and high specific surface area, despite the fact that it is expensive, and does not possess good mechanical strength etc. Based on this context, the silicate based materials such as clays, zeolites; sand, etc constitute a large resource and low-cost material which could be used as an alternative raw material for producing low cost and efficient adsorbent materials. However, due to the poor performance exhibited by natural silicate based materials in pollution withdrawal, amine grafted silicate based material was considered for long years as a promising approach for both adsorption of inorganic and organic pollutants. This review's goal is to make a comprehensive discussion about the preparation, the use of amine grafted silicate based materials and their adsorption behaviour under diverse conditions. The literature survey presented in this paper provides evidence of the good potential of amine grafted silicate based materials to remove several contaminants from aqueous solution.