Fabrication of poly(maleic acid)-grafted cross-linked chitosan/montmorillonite nanospheres for ultra-high adsorption of anionic acid yellow-17 and cationic brilliant green dyes in single and binary systems.

In this contribution, poly(maleic acid)-grafted cross-linked chitosan/montmorillonite composite nanospheres (PMAL-CTS/MMT) were synthesized via a facile approach for adsorption of organic dyes. The adsorption capacity of PMAL-CTS/MMT towards anionic acid yellow-17 (AY17) and cationic brilliant green (BG) was compared to PMAL-CTS, CTS/MMT, and MMT to emphasize the role of surface functional groups introduced by poly(maleic acid) and montmorillonite. Interestingly, the adsorption efficiency of PMAL-CTS/MMT nanocomposite towards both dyes in the single and binary systems was extremely high due to plenty of functional groups. The affinity of PMAL-CTS/MMT towards cationic and anionic dyes resulted from the feasible modulation of the surface charges as a function of the solution pH. The PMAL-CTS/MMT nanocomposite exhibited a maximum adsorption capacity of 518 and 1910 mg g-1 for AY17 and BG, respectively, which is higher than most of the adsorbents reported in recent literature studies. The proposed mechanism based on the characterization of PMAL-CTS/MMT after the adsorption highlighted that the adsorption is mainly controlled by electrostatic interaction, π - π interactions, and hydrogen bonding. More importantly, the PMAL-CTS/MMT nanocomposite was successfully applied to separate the AY17 and BG dyes from real-life aquatic environments. Collectively, the simple fabrication and superior adsorption performance reveal that PMAL-CTS/MMT has the potential to treat concomitant organic dyes effectively.