Application of chitosan based materials in wastewater treatment has
received considerable attention in last years. The most frequently applied technique for
this purpose is the adsorption operation, which typically use activated carbon as
adsorbent in the industrial wastewater treatment systems, because it has a large specific
surface area. However, there has been an increasing interest in utilizing adsorbents
from renewable sources for dyes/metals, removal from wastewater. Chitosan based
materials has been widely used to remove heavy metals and dyes due to its high content
of amino (-NH2) and hydroxyl (-OH) functional groups, which have high activity as
adsorption sites. This chapter presents some applications of chitosan based materials
for dyes/metals, removal from aqueous medium, providing information obtained using
batch and continuous adsorption systems. The effects of parameters in the adsorption
capacity, such as chitosan characteristics, process variables, chemistry interaction
adsorbent/adsorbate, equilibrium, kinetics and thermodynamics are presented and
discussed. The chapter also presents the equilibrium and kinetic models most
commonly used and the thermodynamic studies reported for adsorption onto different
chitosan based materials. Several examples are discussed to demonstrate the versatility
of the material and its application as an adsorbent. Desorption performance and the
structural parameters of the polymer in relation to regeneration as well as the
development of new adsorbents are presented.
Keywords: Adsorption, Chitosan, Dyes, Materials, Metals.
