Lanthanum hydroxides modified poly(epichlorohydrin)-ethylenediamine composites for highly efficient phosphate removal and bacteria disinfection

Abstract Since environmental issues become more intense, the effective elimination of phosphate from water has received increasing attention. In this study, a bi-functional composite, La(OH)3 loaded poly(epichlorohydrin)-ethylenediamine (PEE@La), was fabricated from La-compound and poly(epichlorohydrin)-ethylenediamine (PEE) through a simple chemical synthesis, and its performance on phosphate removal and bacteria disinfection was systematically evaluated. In terms of adsorption, PEE@La-100 % exhibits a maximum capacity with PO43− of 186.6 mg g-1, and the behavior of PEE@La-100 % fits well with Langmuir model and Pseudo second-order kinetic, implying that this process should be a monolayer and chemical adsorption. In addition, PEE@La-100 % maintained a high removal rate in a wide pH range, and the competitive anions had little effect on adsorption of phosphate except for sulfate. Compared to some adsorbents reported in pervious papers, PEE@La-100 % exhibits a larger adsorption capacity and a wider application. The analysis results of various characterization such as XPS, XRD and FT-IR showed that both electrostatic attraction and chemical bonding played an important role in adsorption. Furthermore, PEE@La-100 % also exhibited excellent inhibition on the growth of E.coli, which has rarely been reported before. Overall, this work provides a novel insight in the research of bi-functional composite for both phosphate adsorption and bacterial inhibition with large adsorption capacity and wide application.