In current study, the diphenylaminomethylcalix[4]arene (3) was synthesized and immobilized onto silica surface to prepare a selective, regenerable and stable resin-4. The synthesized resin-4 has been characterized by FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) techniques. To check the adsorption capacity of resin-4, the batch and column adsorption methodology were applied and it has observed that the resin-4 was selectively removed Hg2+ ions under the optimized parameters. The maximum adsorption capacity was obtained at pH 9 using 25 mg/L of resin-4. Under the optimal conditions, different equilibrium, kinetic and thermodynamic models were applied to experimental data. The results show that adsorption mechanism is chemical in nature following Langmuir model with good correlation coefficient (R2=0.999) and having 712.098 (mmol/g) adsorption capacity. The energy of calculated from D-R model suggests the ion exchange nature of the adsorption phenomenon. Dynamic adsorption experiments were conducted using Thomas model. The maximum solid phase concentration (qo) was 7.5 and rate constant was found to be 0.176 with (R2=0.938) for Hg2+ ions. The kinetic study describes that the adsorption mechanism follows pseudo second order (R2=0.999). The thermodynamic parameters such as ∆H (0.032 KJ/mol) and ∆S (0.127 KJ/mol /K) and ∆G (-5.747,-6.306, -7.027 KJ/mol) shows that the adsorption of Hg2+ ion is endothermic and spontaneous. The reusability of resin-4 was also checked and it has observed that the after 15 cycle only 1.2 % adsorption reduces. Moreover, the resin-4 was applied on real wastewater samples obtained from local industrial zone of Karachi, Sindh-Pakistan.


Nida Shams Jalbani, Amber R Solangi, Shahabuddin Memon, Ranjhan Junejo, Asif Ali Bhatti