Synthesis and Characterization of Some Recycled Polystyrene and Chitosan Based Copolymers for Water Hardness Removal

Abstract

Two sets of polymeric resins were prepared and used as ion exchange for the estimation of tap water's total hardness. The first set consisted of three different resins based on the sulfonation of the recycled polystyrene cup tea waste, and the other two resins were produced by grafting polymerization of the acrylamide monomer and its extended polyacrylamide polymer. The second set is based on Chitosan and its grafted derivatives of Chitosan-succinyl-poly (ethylene glycol) polymer. All the prepared resins were characterized by FTIR which confirmed the correctness of the sulfonation process and hence the grafting polymerizations on sulfonated polystyrene and Chitosan. The grafting process causes an increasing efficiency of the sulfonated polystyrene resin from 4% to 54% with sulfonated resin-g-acrylamide monomer in removing the tap water hardness. This resulted in an increase in the chain length of the acrylamide monomer grafted onto the resin via free-radical polymerization with potassium persulfate as an initiator. It increases the efficiency of the consumed resin grafted with polyacrylamide to 80.22%. While with the Chitosan grafted set, the efficiency is increased from 19% to 86% with Chitosan-g-N-succinyl-poly (ethylene glycol).