Chitosan-Bead-Encapsulated Polystyrene Sulfonate for Adsorption of Methylene Blue and Regeneration Studies: Batch and Continuous Approaches

Textile industrialization causes water pollution due to the discharge of industrial effluents into the environment. To reduce the impact of industrial effluent, it must be treated in wastewater treatment plants before discharge into rivers. Among all wastewater treatment approaches, the adsorption process is one method to remove pollutants from wastewater, but it has some limitations in term of reusability and ionic selective adsorption properties. In this study, we prepared cationic poly (styrene sulfonate) (PSS)-incorporated anionic chitosan beads synthesized using the oil–water emulsion coagulation method. The produced beads were characterized using FESEM and FTIR analysis. In batch adsorption studies, the PSS-incorporated chitosan beads exhibited monolayer adsorption processes, that is, exothermic processes that occur spontaneously at low temperatures, which were analyzed based on the adsorption isotherms, adsorption kinetics, and thermodynamics model fittings. The presence of PSS enables cationic methylene blue dye to adsorb to the anionic chitosan structure via electrostatic interaction between the sulfonic group and the dye molecule. The maximum adsorption capacity of PSS-incorporated chitosan beads achieved 42.21 mg/g, as calculated from the Langmuir adsorption isotherm. Finally, the PSS-incorporated chitosan beads demonstrated good regeneration with different types of reagents, especially using sodium hydroxide as a regeneration reagent. With the use of sodium hydroxide regeneration of this adsorbent material, a continuous adsorption setup also demonstrated that PSS-incorporated chitosan beads can be reused for methylene blue adsorption for up to three cycle processes.