Development of triaminotriazine functionalized graphene oxide capped chitosan porous composite beads for nutrients remediation towards water purification

Abstract

The porous, definite and nitrogen rich triaminotriazine (TAT) grafted graphene oxide (GO) known as TATGO composite was developed for nutrients (NO3− and PO43−) retention. Additionally, the structural property of TATGO composite was improved with the use of chitosan (CS) to produce easily separable TATGO@CS hybrid beads which possess the significant NO3− and PO43− adsorption capacities of 58.46 and 61.38 mg/g respectively than their individual materials. The instrumentations such as SEM, TGA, FTIR, EDAX, XRD and BET studies were executed for adsorbents. The optimization of the parameters accountable for adsorption process was performed in batch scale. The effect of isotherms (Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R)), kinetics (pseudo-first/second order and particle/intraparticle diffusion) and thermodynamic parameters (ΔG°, ΔH° and ΔS°) of the adsorption was explored. The removal mechanism of TATGO@CS hybrid beads was to be electrostatic attraction on NO3− and PO43−. The field applicability and reuse of TATGO@CS hybrid beads was also inspected.