Composite hydrogels based on polyvinyl alcohol and neat or modified bentonite for dye removal from wastewater.

THIBAUT BONDER; ROMINA OLLIER; DANILA MERINO; LAURA M. SANCHEZ; VERA ALVAREZ

Mar del Plata

Simposio; XVI SIMPOSIO LATINOAMERICANO DE POLÍMEROS Y XIV CONGRESO IBEROAMERICANO DE POLÍMEROS; 2018

INTEMA

The attention of many scientists recently focused on the development of adsorbent materials for water remediation. Hydrogels are hydrophilic polymernetworks with high water absorption capabilities, which have played an important role in environment remediation field.PVA is a water soluble biodegradable polymer with many applications. Clay minerals are two-dimensional layered materials with peculiar physicochemicalproperties. The interlayer spaces, surfaces and edges of clays provide sites to host, stabilize and tune their properties thereby leading to the formation of a wide variety of nanomaterials. Thus, suitable functionalization of clays represents a promising strategy to design new materials with tailored featuresfor technological applications. Moreover, clays can be confined in polymer matrices to form a class of advanced nanocomposites that would possess exceptional thermal, mechanical and adsorption properties.In this work, strategic preparation of PVA/bentonitenanocomposite hydrogels has led to a variety of adsorbents for dye removal from wastewater. Therefore, the modification of bentonite by acid activation and cation exchange was firstly accomplished. PVA/clay composite hydrogels weresubsequently prepared by an innocuous physical crosslinking method. These materials were thermally and morphologically characterized, and then tested asadsorbents for the removal of cationic and anionic dyes.