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Title Feather-weight cryostructured thiourea-chitosan aerogels for highly efficient removal of heavy metal ions and bacterial pathogens
ID_Doc 10689
Authors Ghiorghita, CA; Lazar, MM; Platon, IV; Humelnicu, D; Doroftei, F; Dinu, MV
Title Feather-weight cryostructured thiourea-chitosan aerogels for highly efficient removal of heavy metal ions and bacterial pathogens
Year 2023
Published
DOI 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.123910
Abstract Designing of economically feasible and recyclable polysaccharide-based materials with thiourea functional groups for removal of specific metal ions such as Ag(I), Au(I), Pb(II) or Hg(II) remains a major challenge for environmental applications. Here, we introduce ultra-lightweight thiourea-chitosan (CSTU) aerogels engineered by combining successive freeze-thawing cycles with covalent formaldehyde-mediated cross-linking and lyophi-lization. All aerogels exhibited outstanding low densities (0.0021-0.0103 g/cm3) and remarkable high specific surface areas (416.64-447.26 m2/g), outperforming the common polysaccharide-based aerogels. Benefitting from their superior structural features (honeycomb interconnected pores and high porosity), CSTU aerogels demonstrate fast sorption rates and excellent performance in sorption of heavy metal ions from highly -concentrated single or binary-component mixtures (1.11 mmol Ag (I)/g and 0.48 mmol Pb(II)/g). A remark-able recycling stability was observed after five sorption-desorption-regeneration cycles when the removal effi-ciency was up to 80 %. These results support the high potential of CSTU aerogels in the treatment of metal -containing wastewater. Moreover, the Ag(I)-loaded CSTU aerogels exhibited excellent antimicrobial properties against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacterial strains, the killing rate being around 100 %. This data points towards the potential application of developed aerogels in circular economy, by employing the spent Ag (I)-loaded aerogels in the biological decontamination of waters.
Author Keywords Chitosan; Aerogels; Sorption; Heavy metal ions; Wastewater purification
Index Keywords Index Keywords
Document Type Other
Open Access Open Access
Source Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED)
EID WOS:000961922700001
WoS Category Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Chemistry, Applied; Polymer Science
Research Area Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Chemistry; Polymer Science
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