hussein ali al-mosawi

In recent years, numerous researchers have concentrated on the process of turning wa s te into usable materials. Poly s tyrene and its modifications have received great attention over the pa s t few decades due to their out s tanding ion exchange behavior toward various toxic heavy metals in aqueous solutions. Therefore, this s tudy is concerned with the preparation of three different cationic polymeric resins for the removal of Pb2+, Cd2+, and Fe3+ heavy metal ions from their contaminated water samples based on the sulfonated singleused poly s tyrene teacup wa s te (SPS), which was used to prepare sulfonated poly s tyrene-g-acrylamide monomer (SPS-g-Acryl) and sulfonated poly s tyrene-g-chitosan (SPS-g-Chit) using commercial chitosan (DD=85%) originally extracted from shrimp cortex. The concentrations of the selected heavy metal ions were measured before and after each experiment with a flame atomic absorption spectrometer (F-AAS). The analytical s tudies s tarted by exploring the influence of pH (2, 4, 6, and 8) on removing the heavy metal ions Pb2+, Cd2+, and Fe3+ from their aqueous solutions. The obtained results revealed that as the pH of the analyzed ion solution is increased, the removal efficiency for ions increases. All three resins (SPS, SPSg- Acryl, and SPS-g-Chit) had different removal efficiencies for the inve s tigated ions, with SPS-g-Chit resin being the be s t in both batching and column loading methods, and they could be compared in the following order: SPS-g-Chit > SPS-g-Acryl > SPS, and it could be reused after regeneration.