The performance of starch microspheres treating wastewater

Starch microsphere is a member of polymer material family having large surface areas, this kind of polymer microsphere can be used to preprocess the wastewater. In this paper, a kind of starch microsphere crosslinked with N, N´-methylenebisacrylamide has been synthesized by reversed phrase suspension method using soluble starch as raw material and K₂S₂O₈-NaHSO₃ as initiator. The chemical structure of the microsphere was characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy, and then adsorption removal characteristics of starch microsphere (SM) toward heavy metal ions, hardness in water and organic compound been studied, and toluene has been used as model molecule. As shown in the results, the saturated adsorption to Cu²⁺ is 2.09mmol/g, to Ni²⁺ is 1.93mmol/g, to Co²⁺ is 1.80mmol/g and to toluene is 2.26mmol/g, the maximum removal toward harness of 573.8 mg/L in water is about 89.90mg (CaO)/g. Due to its good adsorption property, it has vast potential in the water purification field.