Development of a sodium alginate-based organic/inorganic superabsorbent composite hydrogel for adsorption of methylene blue

Batch adsorption experiments were carried out for the removal of methylene blue (MB) cationic dye from aqueous solution using organic/inorganic hydrogel nanocomposite of titania incorporated sodium alginate crosslinked polyacrylic acid (SA-cl-poly(AA)-TiO2). The hydrogel was prepared by graft copolymerization of acrylic acid (AA) onto sodium alginate (SA) biopolymer in the presence of a crosslinking agent, a free radical initiator and TiO2 nanoparticles. The hydrogel exhibited a high swelling capacity of 412.98 g/g. The factors influencing adsorption capacity of the absorbents such as pH of the dye solutions, initial concentration of the dye, amount of absorbents, and temperature were investigated and used to propose a possible mechanism of adsorption. The adsorption process concurs with a pseudo-second-order kinetics and with Langmuir isotherm equation. A very high adsorption capacity (Q(max) = 2257.36 (mg/g)) and a correlation coefficient of 0.998 calculated from isotherm equations show the high efficiency of the absorbent and thus expected to be a good candidate as an absorbent for water treatment. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.