Preparation of hemicellulose-containing latex and its application as absorbent toward dyes

Abstract

The removal of hazardous dyes from process water has become one of the most important tasks for water clarification. In this work, a novel type of latex, prepared by the emulsion polymerization of butyl acrylate (BA) and acrylamide (AM) in the presence of hemicellulose, was developed. Under the optimal polymerization conditions, the conversion of monomers reached as high as 97.6 %. The resulting hemicellulose-containing latex (HCL) was assessed as an absorbent toward dyes, methylene blue (MB) in particular. Much effort was made to revealing the impact of adsorption conditions of the dye removal induced by HCL. The maximum removal of the dye by HCL was about 93.8 %, much higher than that of the control sample. The dye adsorption isotherm was determined to further understand the adsorption mechanism. The adsorption data were found to fit Langmuir model well (R2=0.99904). The maximum adsorption capacity obtained at 25 °C was 42.7 mg g−1, suggesting that the HCL is promising as an excellent absorbent for the removal of dyes from effluents.