Synergetically acting new flocculants on the basis of starch-graft-poly(acrylamide)-co-sodium xanthate

A synergetically acting new flocculant on the basis of starch-graft-poly(acrylamide)co-sodium xanthate (CSAX) was synthesized by grafting copolymerization of crosslinked corn starch, acrylamide (AM), and sodium xanthate, using epichlorohydrin (EPI) as cross-linking agent and ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) as polymerization initiator in aqueous solution. The effects of some factors, such as crosslinker, initiator, AM, NaOH, on the %Tr (turbidity removal rate), %Trd (turbidity removal rate of a water sample which has both turbidity and heavy metal ions %Hr (heavy metal ion removal rate) and %Hrd (heavy metal ions removal rate of water which has both heavy metal ions and turbidity), are investigated. As proven by FTIR and elemental analysis, the CSAX can be successfully synthesized and can remove both turbidity-causing substances and heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions. Under optimum synthesis conditions CSAX exhibits excellent performance, i.e. %Tr = 98%, %Trd = 98.4%, %Hrd = 99% and %Hr = 91.6%, respectively.