Development of poly(1-vinylimidazole)-chitosan composite sorbent under microwave irradiation for enhanced uptake of Cd(II) ions from aqueous media

A chitosan-based composite named poly(1-vinylimidazole)-chitosan (PVI-CS) was fabricated employing a microwave-assisted protocol to be used as a novel composite for CdII contaminated water. The prepared PVI-CS composite was evaluated using SEM-coupled EDX, FTIR and zeta potential analyses. Under certain experimental conditions of the batch process, the binding behavior of PVI-CS sorbent against CdII ions was investigated. Results demonstrate that the optimized experimental conditions for CdII ions removal by PVI-CS composite sorbent were to be pH 7.2, the PVI-CS dose 2.5 g/L and the CdII concentration 25 mg/L at 30 °C. The Langmuir qmax of the PVI-CS turned out to be 204.92 mg/g for CdII ions. The kinetics analysis revealed that the process was best-fitted for pseudo-first-order kinetics with R2 > 0.999. The CdII ions removal efficiency of PVI-CS sorbent remained satisfactory even after five cycles, which establish that PVI-CS is a sustainability composite for an effective water purification system.