New Efficient Adsorbent Materials for the Removal of Cd(II) from Aqueous Solutions

Abstract

The rapid increase of industrial activities leads to serious environmental pollution, especially, in aqueous systems and particularly with heavy metals. Cadmium, one of the most poisonous elements, is rapidly accumulated in the human body, therefore, the efficient removal of cadmium ions from wastewater is an urgent need. Coordination networks (CNs) and its subdivision metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), are structured porous composites which present various special properties. In this work two CNs were used as adsorbent materials for the removal of Cd(II) ions from aqueous solutions. By the reaction of CoSO4·7H2O and NiSO4·7H2O with N,N-bis(phosphonomethyl)glycine (Gly) in hydrothermal conditions two CNs—Co–Gly and Ni–Gly— were synthesized, respectively. Cadmium adsorption onto the studied CNs was conducted in batch mode, and the effect of pH, initial concentration, contact time, temperature and sorbent weight on the sorption process were investigated. Parametric Method 3 (PM3)semi-empirical analyses of the CNs’ structural properties were performed in order to predict the adsorption properties. For this reason, two octahedral models were calculated and computational predictions were compared with the experimental results. Both computational and experimental adsorption studies found that Ni–Gly presents higher affinity for cadmium ions. Moreover, the adsorbent materials can be readily regenerated and recycled without significant loss of cadmium uptake capacity.