Efficient removal of sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate employing chitosan-modified waste floral foam as adsorbent

The wide application of surfactants has brought about severe contamination to environment, especially, in aqueous media. In this connection, efficient removal of surfactant residues in waters is essential. In the present work, a commonly used surfactant, sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS) was employed as a model sur-factant for removal studies. A new adsorbent based on waste floral foam (FF) was prepared and employed to remove SDBS in various waters. Phenol formaldehyde resin-based waste FF was firstly activated with alkali aqueous, and then modified with chitosan (CS) to introduce active amino groups on the framework of FF to obtain the adsorbent based on CS-modified FF (CS@FF). Under the optimized synthesized conditions, the ob-tained adsorbent displayed satisfactory removal performance towards SDBS by means of multipoint and multi-type interactions, 93.3 % SDBS was removed within 30 min. The adsorption behavior of CS@FF towards SDBS well fitted the pseudo-second order kinetic model and Langmuir adsorption model. In addition, increase of temperature favored the removal of SDBS. After the optimization of removal parameters, the CS@FF was used to remove SDBS in actual waters, and the achieved removal rates were obviously higher than that achieved on unmodified FF. The present study not only provides a cost-effective adsorbent for the removal of surfactants, but also opens up a feasible route for reutilization of discarded FF.