Removal of heavy metal ions from wastewater by capacitive deionization using polypyrrole/chitosan composite electrode

• Main Authors: Yujie Zhang, Quanqin Xue, Fei Li, Jizhe Dai
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi - SAGE Publishing 2019-05-01
• Series: Adsorption Science & Technology
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263617418822225

A polypyrrole/chitosan composite material was obtained by chemical polymerization. The adsorption performance of a hot-molded polypyrrole/chitosan composite electrode was tested by adsorption/desorption experiments. Scanning electron microscopy and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy both showed the deposition of polypyrrole on the chitosan surface. The specific capacitance of the polypyrrole/chitosan composite was determined by cyclic voltammetry in 1.0 M KCl at 0.01 V/s as 102.96 F/g. The adsorption/desorption experiments indicated that the specific adsorption capacity of the composite for Cu 2+ was 99.67 mg/g, while the removal performance for other metal ions, such as Ag + , Pb 2+ , and Cd 2+ , was good. The results of multicycle adsorption/desorption tests showed that the adsorption rate of the polypyrrole/chitosan composite electrode for Cu 2+ was decreased from 56.4 to 51.4% over 10 cycles, demonstrating the stable metal-ion adsorption/desorption behavior of the composite electrode. The obtained performances show that the prepared polypyrrole/chitosan composite material is an ideal electrode material for the removal of heavy metal ions.