Preparation of Water Soluble Chitosan Blendmers and Their Application to Removal of Heavy Metal ions from Wastewater

High purity water soluble chitosans (WsCs) were employed as a flocculant to remove heavy metal ions from wastewater of industrial plating wastewater treatment complex. Their weight average molecular weights and polydispersities were 272,000~620,000 g/mol and 1.4~1.9 range, respectively and were readily soluble in water in the pH range of 3~11. Heavy metal ions such as chromium, iron and copper were removed well by WsCs. When WsCs was blended with either sodium N, N-diethyldithiocarbamate trihydrate (SDDC$_{T}$) or sodium salicylate (SSc), the removal efficiency was further increased primarily due to the excess amount of hydrophilic sulfonic and carboxylic groups. Especially, in the case of WsCs-SSc the remaining chromium and copper concentrations were 0.1 mg/L and 9.5 mg/L, which are 1/15 and 1/3 compared with that of pure WsCs, respectively. The former is within the acceptable limit, but the latter is not. Therefore, the effective copper flocculant remains to be studied.d.