Chemical modification of cellulosic biopolymer and its use in removal of heavy metal ions from wastewater.

Use of biological macromolecules for wastewater remediation process has become the topic of intense research mostly driven by growing concerns about the depletion of petroleum oil reserves and environmental problems. So in view of technological significance of cellulosic biopolymers in various fields, the present study is an attempt to synthesize cellulosic biopolymers based graft copolymers using free radical polymerization. The resulting cellulosic polymers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermogravimetric (TGA) analysis. Furthermore, modified cellulosic biopolymer was used in removal of Cu(2+), Zn(2+), Cd(2+) and Pb(2+) toxic metal ions from wastewater. The effects of pH, contact time, temperature and metal ions concentration were studied in batch mode experiments. Langmuir and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) models were used to show the adsorption isotherm. The maximum monolayer capacity qm calculated using Langmuir isotherm for Cu(2+), Zn(2+), Cd(2+), Pb(2+) metal ions were 1.209, 0.9623, 1.2609 and 1.295mmol/g, respectively. The thermodynamic parameters ΔH° and ΔG° values for metal ions adsorption on modified cellulosic biopolymer showed that adsorption process was spontaneous as well as exothermic in nature.

Functionalization of cellulosic fibers by graft copolymerization of acrylonitrile and ethyl acrylate from their binary mixtures.

Functionalization of Agave fibers was carried out by graft copolymerization of acrylonitrile (AN) and ethyl acrylate (EA) from their binary solutions in presence of Ce (IV) ions at a temperature of 45±0.1°C. An increase in the graft copolymerization was obtained with the increase in the feed molarity of the comonomers up to certain extent. Contrary to lesser affinity of acrylonitrile to grafting on Agave fibers, a synergistic effect of ethyl acrylate on acrylonitrile was observed when graft copolymers were prepared using different feed compositions (fAN). The graft copolymers were characterized by various techniques such as FT-IR, TGA/DTA, X-RD and SEM analysis. Further swelling behavior of grafted fibers in different solvents, moisture absorption behavior and resistance to chemicals was investigated as a function of percent grafting to define their end uses in different environments.