Removal of silver from chloride solutions using new polymer materials

This work presents the synthesis of polymer resins with heterocyclic functional groups, that is, N-(3-aminopropyl)-2-pipecoline, N-(3-aminopropyl)-2-pyrrolidinone, and trans-1,4-diaminocyclohexane for the recovery of Ag(I) from chloride solutions. The modification yield was 69.2, 74.6 and 88.3%, respectively. The best Ag(I) sorption was achieved from synthetic and real chloride solutions in the case of trans-1,4-diaminocyclohexane resin (sorption was 26.8 and 21.5 mg/g, respectively). The sorption kinetic data were well fitted to the pseudo-first-order kinetic model. The maximum sorption capacity of Ag(I) is 105.4, 117.8 and 130.7 mg Ag(I)/g for N-(3-aminopropyl)-2-pipecoline resin, N-(3-aminopropyl)-2-pyrrolidinone resin and trans-1,4-diaminocyclohexane resin, respectively. The trans-1,4-diaminocyclohexane modified resin was very selective towards Ag(I) compared to Cu(II), Pb(II), and Zn(II) from the real chloride leaching solution. The N-(3-aminopropyl)-2-pipecoline and N-(3-aminopropyl)-2-pyrrolidinone resins showed high preferences for Ag(I) over Pb(II) in real solution. These results indicated that the polymers can be applied in the recovery of Ag(I).