Abstract
Grafting of Acrylonitrile onto cellulose from different sources, using a variety of chemical initiators under various reaction conditions has been thoroughly investigated and reported. Hydrophobic nature of acrylonitrile hinders the partition of metal ions form aqueous phase thus narrows the applicationspectrum of its graft copolymers inseparation and enrichment processes. However, this drawback can be improved by post functionalization of nitrile (-CN) group to generate hydrophilic/ionic moieties by simple reactions like hydrolysis or substitution. In present study, acrylonitrile (AN) was grafted onto commercial cellulose to produce graft copolymers which can be used as starting materials for development of efficient metal ions sorbents. Grafting was carried out by redox initiation method using Ce+4 ions following the earlier reported scheme at the optimum grafting conditions worked out for grafting of AN onto cellulose ether, Hydroxyethyl cellulose(HEC). Graft copolymer thus obtained [hereafter called cell-g-poly (AN)] was characterized by Elemental analysis and FTIR. Both, cellulose and HEC belong to same back bone therefore, exhibited similar behaviour towards grafting. Percent grafting (Pg =50) obtained in case of cellulose was in close agreement with (Pg=55.5) that observed in case of HEC. Cell-g-poly (AN) served as useful precursor to develop reactive metal ion sorbing polymer supports as nitrile (-CN) moiety of poly (AN) is amenable to post functionalization and could be conveniently modified to targeted metal ion chelating amido-oxime group [poly (NH2-C=NHOH))] thus the resultant polymer could be used as a novel support for metal ion sorption.
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