Authors: Bernabé L Rivas Sara Hube Julio Sánchez Eduardo Pereira
Publish Date: 2012/06/19
Volume: 69, Issue: 8, Pages: 881-898
Abstract
This article describes the retention properties of commercial chelating watersoluble polymers for different metal ions in aqueous solution using a liquidphase polymerbased retention LPR technique The polymers studied were polyethyleneimine or PEI waterfree and a 50 aqueous solution and polyethyleneimine epichlorohydrin or PEIE a 17 aqueous solution These commercial polymers were fractionated by ultrafiltration membranes and then characterized by Fouriertransformed infrared spectroscopy The extraction process was performed using the following metal ions Cu2+ Cd2+ Co2+ Ni2+ Zn2+ Pb2+ and Cr3+ In the washing studies we varied the pH 3 5 and 7 and retention time The results showed that PEI showed high retention for all the metal ions at pH 7 and for selective retention of Cu2+ at pH 5 while PEIE showed selective retention of Cu2+ ions at pH 7 Using the enrichment method the maximum retention capacity of Cu2+ and Cd2+ was achieved using a 50 aqueous solution of PEI at pH 5 and 7 respectively Finally charge–discharge experiments for Cu2+ were analysed by changing the pH from basic to acidic over three cycles These results showed that it is possible to remove metal ions and regenerate the removal capacity of the polychelatogens using the LPR technique
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