Quaternary chitosan salt was synthesized in the presence of glycidyl trimetyl ammonium chloride. The polymer was characterized by spectroscopic techniques: infrared, 13C and ¹H NMR, while the amount of quaternary ammonium groups was obtained by condutimetry. The removal of Cr (VI), Mo (VI) and Se (VI) from aqueous solutions was carried out in batch adsorption processes. The process seemed to be pH dependent for Cr (VI) and Se (VI) with an optimum pH ranging from 4.0 to 6.0; while for Mo (VI) the adsorption remained almost constant within the range between 4.0 and 11.5. The Langmuir isotherm model provided the best fit of the equilibrium data over the whole concentration investigated. In the experiment one gram of cross-linked quaternary chitosan salt adsorbed 68.3 mg of chromium, 63.4 mg of molybdenum and 90.0 mg of selenium. The adsorption process followed a pseudo second-order kinetic rate equation and the equilibrium regarding the three ions was reached after 200 minutes. The studies from X-ray dispersive energy showed that the main adsorption mechanism is ionic exchange among Cl- groups on the polymer surface by oxyanions from solution and the anionic exchanger showed the following selectivity order: Cr (VI) > Mo (VI) > Se (VI).
Adsorption; chromium (VI); molybdenum (VI); selenium (VI); quaternary chitosan salt
