Synthesis of Silica Gel Supported Amidoxime Ligand for Adsorption of Copper and Iron from Aqueous Media

Organic-inorganic hybrid polymers have been demonstrated to be an efficient technique for the adsorption of pollutants present in water. Silica gel adsorbent has been applied in this field due to promising characters, such as thermally stable, reusability and high metal ion adsorption capacities. Here, silica gel supported acrylonitrile functional group (silica-APTS-DPN) was reacted with hydroxylamine to yield silica gel supported amidoxime ligand (SBA). All the functionalized silica gel adsorbents were characterized by FTIR. In terms of metal ions adsorption, SBA revealed good absorption capacities towards both copper (Cu2+) (172 mg g-1) and iron (Fe3+) (168 mg g-1) ions at pH 6 and followed the order of Cu2+ > Fe3+. Increased pH condition was beneficial for both metal ions adsorption. The adsorption kinetics of both ions followed the pseudo-first-order model within 0-60 min of adsorption time. Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models were both applied to study the adsorption behaviour, Freundlich isotherm model (R2 > 0.99) proved to be a better fit, which propose that multilayer adsorption occurred on the silica gel grafted with amidoxime ligand. Finally, this study proved that the silica gel supported amidoxime ligand was successfully applied as an absorbent for the removal of both copper and iron from aqueous media.