A comparative study on the chitosan membranes prepared from acetic acid and glycine hydrochloride for removal of copper

Application of chitosan-based materials as adsorbents in wastewater treatment has received considerable attention in recent years. This study is concerned with the influence of various parameters of the reaction medium with a metal and a biosorbant on the kinetics of copper biosorption from synthetic solutions. Initially, we prepared pure chitosan-based membranes and those modified in two different ways: chitosan membrane prepared from traditional acetic acid and the membrane prepared from glycine hydrochloride, chitosan membranes modified such as chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) blends membrane with different compositions (100/0, 80/20, 50/50, 20/80 and 0/100%) and chitosan membranes cross-linked with glutaraldehyde. The membranes were characterized by FTIR spectroscopy, DSC, and rheological measurements. Then, we studied the kinetics of copper biosorption by the membranes. The results suggest that adding PVA to a chitosan membrane can greatly improve the flexibility and wettability of chitosan membranes. The values attained in equilibrium for the chitosan membranes prepared from glycine hydrochloride (95.5 mg g‒1 for chitosan/PVA 50/50%) exceed those for chitosan membranes prepared from acetic acid (61.5 mg/g for chitosan/PVA 50/50%).