Anion-synergistic adsorption enhances the selective removal of silver ions from complex wastewater by chitosan-coated magnetic silica core-shell nanoparticles

The selective separation and recovery of valuable metals from complex polluted wastewater is of great significance to the protection of water resources and the realization of resource recycling. Herein, the chitosan-coated magnetic silica core-shell nanoparticles (FO@SD@CS) were fabricated and applied as adsorbents for highly selective removal of precious metals silver ions (Ag(I)) from complex wastewater. In multi-ion compound polluted solutions, FO@SD@CS showed excellent selective adsorption of Ag(I) in a wide pH range, and an enhancement of the highly selective adsorption capacity of Ag(I), which was increased from 85.86 to 126.74 mg g⁻¹ when the concentrations of methyl blue (MB) coexisted in the solution from 0 to 40 mg L⁻¹ at pH 6.0. The results of Ag(I) single system batch adsorption experiments illustrated that the adsorption behavior of FO@SD@CS to Ag(I) shows obvious pH responsiveness, the adsorption capacity of Ag(I) increases with the increasing of pH value. The results of the adsorption isotherm and kinetics demonstrated that Langmuir and pseudo-second-order kinetics can better describe the adsorption behavior of Ag(I) on FO@SD@CS, indicating that the adsorption process was controlled by chemisorption and the maximum monolayer adsorption capacity reached 116.28 mg g⁻¹ at room temperature. Additionally, in the dye-metal binary system, the coexisting MB promoted the adsorption capacity of FO@SD@CS to Ag(I) from 116.28 to 156.25 mg g⁻¹, showing a synergistic adsorption effect. This study shows that the enhanced selective separation and recovery of metal ions from wastewater based on anion-synergistic not only provides new ideas for wastewater treatment, but also has important significance for water resources reuse.