Synthesis and characterization of thermosensitive-ionic based gel in various temperatures

The rapid development of technology in industry produces heavy metals waste which identified as B3 waste, thus management is needed to maintain the ecosystem and life around it. One of the industries which needs B3 waste management is electroplating industry. The acidic effluent from electroplating industrial contains heavy metals like chromium, nickel, and cadmium. Waste containing heavy metals can be regenerated through varied methods, one of them is by utilizing zwitterion betaine gel. However, the weakness of this method is the presence of intra-intra chain association so that the ionic group ability to adsorb the ion is inhibited by the charge group interaction. Therefore, in this research, the intra-intra chain of these gels were minimalized by synthetizing anionic and cationic gel separately using NIPAM-co-Chi and NIPAM-co-AAc copolymer. NIPAM-co-Chi and NIPAM-co-AAc gels were synthetized through polymerization reaction using N,N'-methylenebisacrylamide (MBAA) as the cross linker with NIPAM-co-Chi and NIPAM-co-AAc concentration ratio of 8:2 at various syntesis temperatures. Heavy metal adsorbed simultaneously by the charge group in gel. Several analysis were done to investigate the characteristic of the gel produced, including FTIR, swelling degree, gel morphology through SEM. Based on the FTIR analysis result on NIPAM-co-Chi and NIPAM-co-AAc gels, only a few vinyl group seen on its functional group, so that it can be conclude that the synthesis of the gel copolymer was successfully carried out. The highest swelling degree on NIPAM-co-Chi was at synthesis temperature of 10 °C, while on NIPAM-co-AAc was at synthesis temperature of 30 °C. The lowest swelling degree on NIPAM-co-Chi was at synthesis temperature of 70 °C, while on NIPAM-co-AAc was at synthesis temperature of 70 °C. Furthermore, based on SEM result, porous was found on both gels at synthesis temperatures of 30 °C, 50 °C, and 70 °C.