The present paper describes the design of shape-oriented hydrogel nanospheres using a facile ultrasonication-supported crosslinked copolymerization technique. The effect of variable monomer concentration on the homogeneity of hydrogel nanospheres was investigated. The chitosan-cl-poly(MMA) hydrogel nanospheres were well characterized using various techniques such as FTIR, XRD, TGA, SEM, and TEM. The chitosan-cl-poly(MMA) hydrogel nanospheres were studied for their swelling behavior and could potentially be used as a novel adsorbent for rhodamine B dye remediation from aqueous media. The study found that utilizing chitosan-cl-poly(MMA) nanohydrogel spheres at the optimal pH 5 increased RhB dye adsorption capacity from 7.9 to 17.8 mg/g (pH 2 to 5), followed by a slight reduction. Furthermore, when nanohydrogel concentration increased, adsorption capacity dropped from 18.03 to 2.8 mg/g, but adsorption percentage climbed from 90.2% to 97.8%. At an initial dye concentration of 140 mg/L, rhodamine B adsorption achieved 204.3 mg/g in 60 min. The rhodamine B dye adsorption study includes adsorption kinetics, isotherm, and thermodynamics analyses. The interpretation of the adsorption study revealed that Langmuir isotherms fit best with a qmax value of 276.26 mg/g, which is in close approximation with the experimental value, whereas pseudo-second-order kinetics explains the adsorption process rate. The interaction of RhB dye with chitosan-cl-poly(MMA) hydrogel nanospheres involves multiple forces such as electrostatic interactions, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals forces, etc.
Keywords: dye adsorption; hydrogel; ultrasonication.