Title
Grafting of some monomers onto cellulose and determination of metal and water uptake properties
Authors
NEVIN CANKAYA and M. MURSIT TEMUZ

Received July 23, 2013
Published Volume 49 Issue 2 February
Keywords cellulose, graft copolymer, metal ion and water uptake

Abstract
Some new cellulosic materials with water uptake capacity and being suitable for the sorption of metal ions were synthesized by the grafting of cellulose with monomers, such as N-(4-nitrophenyl)acrylamide (4NPA), N cyclohexylacrylamide (NCA), 4-vinylpyridine (4VP), acrylamide (AM), methacrylamide (MAM), diacetoneacrylamide (DAAM), methylmethacrylate (MMA) and diallylamine (DA). Firstly, cellulose methacrylate (Cell.met) was prepared by esterification of the primary -OH group of cellulose with methacryloyl chloride with a 21.3% yield by mole. The monomers were grafted into cellulose methacrylate via free radical polymerization using 2,2’-azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as an initiator in acetonitrile. The graft copolymers were characterized by FT-IR spectra, elemental analyses and thermal analysis. The thermal stabilities of the graft copolymers were determined by the TGA method and it was established that the thermal stability of the copolymers decreased with grafting. The water uptake capacity of 8 graft copolymers and their metal ion sorption tendency (Ni²⁺, Co²⁺, Cu²⁺, Cd²⁺, Pb²⁺, Fe³⁺ and Cr³⁺) were found to improve with grafting.