Preparation of ion exchange resin using soluble starch and acrylamide by graft polymerization and hydrolysis.

Based on soluble starch and acrylamide by performing graft polymerization in aqueous solution and hydrolysis step, a low-cost ion exchange resin has been synthesized to remove the heavy metal ions of Cr3+ and Ni2+. The hydrolysis progresses by adding NaOH to convert -CONH2 to -COONa, and the adsorption experiments confirmed that the functional group to adsorb heavy metals is -COO-, rather than -CONH2. During the determination of heavy metal adsorption, the Na+ concentration diffused by SR-16 into the solution was also analysed to investigate the ion exchange process. The composition and morphology of SR-16 was characterized by FT-IR, SEM, elemental analyser and EDS, and the results showed that SR-16 has an excellent adsorption capacity to the removal of heavy metal pollution; the adsorption mechanism of SR-16 could be explained by ion exchange progress with -COONa attached on the network structure.