Innovation of high-performance adsorbent based on modified gelatin for wastewater treatment

Wastewater treatment is one of the most interesting fields nowadays, especially removal of synthetic dyes from aqueous solution. For example, malachite green is considered as one the serious cationic dyes because cause tremendous damage to the human health then a series of dangerous diseases. Herein, we reported the synthesis of high-efficient novel anionic adsorbent hydrogels as gelatin-grafted-poly(acrylamide-co-itaconic acid) via free-radical polymerization by using methylenebisacrylamide, MBA, as crosslinking agent. The prepared modified gelatin hydrogels were detected via several analysis techniques: FTIR, XRD, and SEM, and thermal stability was studied by TGA technique as well. Moreover, the swellability of prepared hydrogel was examined and the data were found that maximum swelling rate % was 911% at optimum preparation conditions: 0.3 M of acrylamide and itaconic acid, 2.5 h, 5% (w/w%) of MBA, and temperature was 60 °C. Additionally, the maximum adsorption malachite green capacity by grafted gelatin hydrogels was measured as 93.5% (166.7 mg/g) in basic pH of 50 mL of MG dye solution (125 ppm) using 50 mg of hydrogels at 30 °C for 60 min. The adsorption isotherm models such as Langmuir and Freundlich for capture of dye was examined and results were well fitted with Langmuir model (R2 = 0.9923).