Highly Efficient Chelating Polymers Based on Plastic Waste for Removal of Toxic Heavy Metal Pollutants

NEW efficient chelating polymers CPs based on waste …….poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) functionalized by itaconic acid moieties in absence and presence of montmorillonite clay MMT have been prepared by simple solution polymerization technique.  The obtained CPs have been characterized using various techniques such as Fourier-Infra-red (FT-IR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) and thermo gravimetrical analysis (TGA). The prepared CPs has been used as potential adsorbents for removal of different toxic metal ions from their aqueous solutions. The CP containing MMT clay showed higher sorption capacity. The adsorption performance of the prepared CPs has been found to match well with Langmuir adsorption isotherms. The maximum sorption capacity for Cu ⁺² ions was found to be 200.7 mg/g at natural pH 5.8 and was highly enhanced to reach 478.6 mg/g at higher pH values. The correlation coefficient values showed that the sorption of Cu⁺² ions by CP with and without clay fit well pseudo-second order models. The highest sorption affinity of the prepared CPs towards different metal ions was in the order Co ˃Ni ˃Pb ˃ Cu˃ Cd˃Cr and Pb˃Cu ˃Cd ˃ Ni ˃Co ˃ Cr for CP without and with clay respectively.