Increasing the clay membranes' Cr3+ Ions removal ability by coating a bentonite-CMC composite

In this research, bentonite was intercalated with CMC and then two different percentages of glutaraldehyde (5 & 10%) were added as a crosslink agent to achieve non water-soluble composites. Then the composites were coated on clay-based microfiltration membranes which were synthesized in the previous work of the authors. The XRD technique was used to track the intercalation mechanism and FTIR was used to study the crosslink procedure. SEM was used to study the microstructure and morphology of the coated samples and then the ability of non-coated and coated samples for removal of Cr³⁺ ions was studied and compared. It was seen that the samples coated with the synthesized composite including 10% of glutaraldehyde showed the best results and removed 99.7% of Cr³⁺ ions from water polluted with 5 ppm of Cr³⁺ ions.