Development of poly(1-vinylimidazole)-chitosan composite sorbent under microwave irradiation for enhanced uptake of Cd(II) ions from aqueous media

A chitosan-based composite named poly(1-vinylimidazole)-chitosan (PVI-CS) was fabricated employing a microwave-assisted protocol to be used as a novel composite for Cd-II contaminated water. The prepared PVI-CS composite was evaluated using SEM-coupled EDX, FTIR and zeta potential analyses. Under certain experimental conditions of the batch process, the binding behavior of PVI-CS sorbent against Cd-II ions was investigated. Results demonstrate that the optimized experimental conditions for Cd-II ions removal by PVI-CS composite sorbent were to be pH 7.2, the PVI-CS dose 2.5 g/L and the Cd-II concentration 25 mg/L at 30 degrees C. The Langmuir q(max) of the PVI-CS turned out to be 204.92 mg/g for Cd-II ions. The kinetics analysis revealed that the process was best-fitted for pseudo-first-order kinetics with R-2 > 0.999. The Cd-II ions removal efficiency of PVI-CS sorbent remained satisfactory even after five cycles, which establish that PVI-CS is a sustainability composite for an effective water purification system.