Chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol/hydroxyapatite nanocomposite membrane for the efficient adsorption of <scp>Congo</scp> red anionic dye
Vahid Zeynali, Seyed Mahmoud Mousavi, Ehsan Saljoughi, Shirin Kiani, Mika Sillanpää
Abstract
Abstract This work focused on fabricating a novel chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol/ hydroxyapatite (CPH) nanocomposite membrane and its application in removing the Congo red (CR) from aqueous solutions. After proper characterization of the chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol/hydroxyapatite adsorptive membrane, adsorption tests were carried out on the optimum nanocomposite membrane containing 1 wt% hydroxyapatite. The impact of temperature, contact time, initial dye concentration, adsorbent dosage, and pH was investigated. Results of isotherm and kinetic investigation revealed that Langmuir isotherm and pseudo‐second order kinetics best fitted experimental results with R 2 values of 0.995. A relatively high adsorption capacity of 491 mg/g, higher than that of activated carbon, was achieved.