Preparation of graphite oxide/polyurethane foam material and its removal application of malachite green from aqueous solution

Synthetic dyes are commonly used in textile, paper, leather, food, plastic and cosmetic industries. In this study, a series of novel graphite oxide/polyurethane (GO/PU) polymeric foam materials were prepared by foaming technique. The GO/PU was applied to remove malachite green (MG) from aqueous solution. When static adsorption experiment was carried out with a GO content of 3.0%, a GO/PU dosage of 40 mg/mL, a temperature of 50°C, and a time of 3 h, the highest adsorption efficiency can reach 99.7%. The kinetics, equilibrium and thermodynamics of MG adsorption onto GO/PU polymeric foam material were investigated. The results indicated that adsorption behavior was found to follow closely the pseudo‐second order kinetics, equilibrium data were well fitted by Langmuir adsorption model and the adsorption process was spontaneous and endothermic. Prepared GO/PU foam material has potential application for the wastewater treatment containing MG dye. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 40988.