Water pollution by heavy metals represents several health risks. Conventional technologies employed to eliminate lead ions from residual or drinking water are expensive, therefore an efficient and low-cost technique is required and adsorption processes are a good alternative. In this work, the goal was to determine the adsorption capacity of a Disordered Mesoporous Silica 1 material (DMS-1) functionalized with amino groups, for Pb(II) ions removal. DMS-1 was prepared by sol-gel method and the incorporation of amino groups was performed by ex-situ method. As the source of amine groups, (3-Aminopropyl) triethoxysilane (APTES) was used and three different xNH2/DMS-1 molar ratios (0.2, 0.3, 0.4) were evaluated. In order to evaluate the incorporation of the amino group into the mesopore channels, thermal and structural analysis were made through Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), nitrogen adsorption-desorption at 77 K by Specific Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (SBET) method, Fourier Transfer Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The higher Pb(II) ions removal was achieved with the 0.3 molar proportion of xNH2/DMS-1 reaching 99.44% efficiency. This result suggests that the functionalized material can be used as an efficient adsorbent for Pb(II) ions from aqueous solution.
Keywords: disordered mesoporous silica; heavy metal removal; mesoporous adsorbent; water purification.