A new multi-hydroxyl methacrylate based adsorbent for boron removal from aqueous solutions

A new methacrylate-based multi-hydroxyl functional group carrying polymeric sorbent was prepared starting from spherical beads form crosslinked glycidyl methacrylate-co-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate resin. The beads with epoxy functions can give easily ring opening reaction treatment with excess tris(2-aminoethyl) amine to obtain aminated sorbent. And then, this resin was modified with glycidol to give the corresponding multi-hydroxyl functions. The resulting polymeric sorbent has been shown to be efficient in chelation with boric acid and maximum boron sorption capacity of the resin was found as 4.20 mmol/g resin under non-buffered conditions. According to the boron sorption kinetic results, the resin was shown to be appropriate for removal of boron even at ppm levels. The presence of different ions such as Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺, Cl⁻, SO₄^2- have little effect on boron sorption of the resin. After four consecutive adsorption-desorption cycles, the resin gave good performance for re-using.