Design, characterization and evaluation of hydroxyethylcellulose based novel regenerable supersorbent for heavy metal ions uptake and competitive adsorption

Abstract Hydroxyethylcellulose succinate-Na (HEC-Suc-Na) was designed and evaluated for removal of some heavy metal ions from aqueous solution. Pristine sorbent HEC-Suc-Na was thoroughly characterized by FTIR and solid-state CP/MAS 13C NMR spectroscopy, SEM-EDS and zero point charge analyses. Langmuir isotherm, pseudo second order kinetic and ion exchange models provided best fit to the experimental data of sorption of metal ions. Maximum sorption capacities of supersorbent HEC-Suc-Na for sorption of heavy metal ions from aqueous solution as calculated by Langmuir isotherm model were found to be 1000, 909.09, 666.6, 588 and 500 mg g−1 for Pb(II), Cr(VI), Co(II), Cu(II) and Ni(II), respectiv…