Fabrication and Application of Polyethylenimine/Ca-Alginate Blended Hydrogel Fibers as High-Capacity Adsorbents for Recovery of Gold from Acidic Solutions

Abstract

High-capacity polyethylenimine (PEI)/Ca-alginate blended hydrogel fibers were fabricated via three steps, viz. electrostatic blending of PEI and alginate, ionotropic gelation of alginate and CaCl2, and fixing of PEI into the Ca-alginate matrix, using glutaraldehyde (GA) as a crosslinker. Two crosslinking approaches resulted in different stabilities and gold uptake capacities of the prepared sorbents. Post-crosslinking approach was more efficient than pre-crosslinking likely owing to the better crosslinking efficiency, leading to better stability and sorption capacity. Furthermore, X-ray diffraction (XRD) study revealed the reduction of Au (III) to metallic gold, Au (0) in the crosslinked fibers. The Au (0) predominancy was confirmed with a metal desorption study. The present study thus demonstrates the possibility of recovering metallic gold from aqueous solutions by direct adsorption-coupled-reduction approach using GA-crosslinked PEI/Ca-alginate fibers.