Ligand based sustainable composite material for sensitive nickel(II) capturing in aqueous media

[Display omitted] •Sustainable composite material was fabricated for sensitive Ni(II) ion remediation.•The materials were exhibited immense sensitivity toward Ni(II) ion at optimum state.•The diverse competing ion was not interfered due to the strong affinity at selected pH. Organic ligand based sustainable composite material was prepared for the detection and removal of nickel (Ni(II)) ion from contaminated water. The ligand was anchored based on the building-block approach. The carrier silica and ligand embedded composite material were characterized systematically. The detection and removal of Ni(II) ion operation was evaluated according to the solution pH, reaction time, detection limit, initial Ni(II) concentration and diverse co-existing metal ions. The detection limit of Ni(II) ion by the proposed composite material was 0.41 μg L−1. The detection and removal of Ni(II) ion was significantly influenced by the solution pH. However, the neutral pH 7.0 was chosen for sensitive and selective detection and removal of Ni(II) ion. The co-existing diverse metal ions were not interfered during the detection and removal of Ni(II) ion because of the high affinity of Ni(II) ion to composite material at the optimum experimental conditions. The Langmuir adsorption isotherm model was selected based on the materials morphology and applied to validate the adsorption isotherms according to the homogeneous ordered frameworks. The adsorption capacity was 199.19 mg g−1 as expected due to the high surface area of material. The adsorbed Ni(II) ion was completely eluted from the composite material with the eluent of 0.50 M HCl and the regenerated material was used in several cycles without deterioration in its initial performances. Therefore, it is expected to that the Facile composite material may hold huge potentials in applications and may be scaled up for commercial applications, including environmental detection and removal of Ni(II) ion.