Adsorption of Copper from an Aqueous Solution by Chemically Modified Cassava Starch

The present research work demonstrated removal of copper (ii) ions from an aqueous solution by grafting cassava starch with 5-chloromethyl-8-hydroxyquinoline (cmq). a copolymer was prepared by grafting cmq on cassava starch and was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (sem),energy dispersive x-ray (edx) and fourier transform infrared (ftir). the study was performed under different experimental conditions of initial metal ion concentrations,adsorbent dose,time and ph. the maximum adsorption was found to occur at ph value of 6.0 and within 90 min of contact time. the adsorption has been explained in the terms of langmuir and freundlich isotherm. the experimental data was found to obey with the langmuir adsorption isotherm. although the r2 value for both the isotherms were close to unity the low chi square value for langmuir isotherm indicate the applicability of this cassava starch cmq copolymer (cscmq) for cu removal in monolayer with several possible functional groups responsible for sorption of the metal ions. this work suggests that the present cmq starch copolymer can be more useful for the removal of copper from effluents discharged by industries. © 2015.