This work describes the preparation of a chelating resin from chemically modified chitosan. The resin was synthesized by using O-carboxymethylated chitosan to cross-link a polymeric Schiff's base of thiourea/glutaraldehyde and characterized by IR. Batch method was applied for testing the resin's adsorption behavior. Adsorption experiments showed the resin had good adsorption capacity and high selectivity for Ag(I) in aqueous solution. The maximum uptake of Ag(I) exhibited was 3.77 mmol/g, at pH 4.0. The results also indicated that the adsorption process was exothermic and fit well with the pseudo-second-order kinetic model. Ag(I) desorption could reach 99.23% using 0.5 M thiourea-2.0 M HCl solution.
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