Water and soil decontamination of toxic heavy metals using aminosilica-functionalized-ionic liquid nanocomposite

Abstract

A chemical modification method is presented to establish a surface functionalization procedure of amino modified nanosilica (NS-amine) with 1-(3-cyanopropyl)-3-methylimidazolium-bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl) type of ionic liquid, [CN-C3-MIm]+[NTf2]− for the formation of a novel NS-amine-IL nanocomposite. Based on the TEM analysis and DLS technique, the diameter of the proposed nanocomposite was found 25.4 ± 0.8 nm. The designed NS-amine-IL nanocomposite was additionally characterized using FT-IR, XRD, EDX, TGA, SEM and zeta potential. The sequestration performance of NS-amine-IL was investigated for remediation of bivalent lead and cadmium ions from aqueous solutions. The effects of medium acidity, contact time, NS-amine-IL dosage, interfering ions, temperature and initial adsorbates concentrations on the removal processes of investigated cations were excessively studied. The maximum extraction values of Pb(II) and Cd(II) were recorded at pH 4–5 and pH 7, respectively. The thermodynamic profiles of the adsorption process were searched at optimal conditions. The adsorption processes were feasibly endothermic and fitted well with the Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-order kinetics equation. The experimental data indicated that the novel nanocomposite was a promising material for the extraction of both metal ions from wastewater and soil samples with determined recoveries 98.0–99.0% ± 4.9.