Removal of Acidic and Basic Dyes from Water using Crosslinked Polystyrene Based Quaternary Ethyl Piperazine Resin

In this study, a beaded polymer with quaternary amine functions was prepared in two steps, starting from poly (vinyl benzyl chloride-ethylene glycol dimethacrylate) (PVBC) based beads, according to the synthetic protocol; modification of ethyl piperazine with PVBC (EP-PS), and quaternization of ethylpiperazine modified beads with chloroacetic acid (QEP-PS). The QEP-PS resin was used for the removal of reactive red 120 as an acidic dye and malachite green chloride as a basic dye. Dye extraction experiments were carried out simply by contacting wetted sorbent samples with aqueous dye solutions at room temperature. Capacities were determined by colorimetric analysis of the residual dye contents. The resin showed that reasonable high dye sorption capacity (0.34-0.41 g per gram of dry resin) was achieved. The adsorption conditions (initial dye concentration and pH) were varied to evaluate the mechanism of adsorption of both basic dyes and acidic dyes on the prepared resin. This material is also able to remove both the anionic dye and cationic dyes completely even from highly diluted aqueous dye solutions.