To date, many efforts have been made in order to develop novel cost-efficient materials that can be used to remove heavy metal ions from aqueous solution. The aim of this work was to evaluate the adsorption capacity of nanocomposites prepared from starch and sodium montmorillonite (starch/Na-MMT). To this end, nanocomposites with different starch-to-nanoclay ratio (SN) of 5:1, 10:1 and 10:3 were prepared by intercalation technique in acetic acid solution and used for nickel and cobalt uptake. The characterization techniques of Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) were conducted to determine physicochemical and morphological properties of nanocomposites as well as bean starch. The initial concentration of metal ions, pH and SN ratios were varied to assess how well the starch/Na-MMT nanocomposites could remove cobalt and nickel from aqueous solutions. Experimental results were used to calculate parameters of the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. It was found that pH = 4.5, C_o = 100 ppm (metal concentration in solution), and SN = 10:1 were the most suitable conditions based on the removal yield (97.1%) and adsorptive favourability for nickel ions. For cobalt, the highest removal yield (78.07%) was achieved using pH = 6, C_o = 140 ppm and SN = 10:3. The fitting of the data to the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms indicated a multilayer adsorption process for both heavy metals. These results showed that the nanocomposite starch/Na-MMT exhibited attractive adsorption properties for its application during wastewater remediation. The incorporation of Na-MMT in the bean starch matrix is strongly encouraged for nickel uptake due to the adsorption efficiencies increase by 35% compared to the unmodified starch.

迄今为止，为了开发可用于从水溶液中去除重金属离子的新颖的具有成本效益的材料，已经进行了许多努力。这项工作的目的是评估由淀粉和蒙脱土钠（淀粉/ Na-MMT）制备的纳米复合材料的吸附能力。为此，通过在乙酸溶液中的插层技术制备了淀粉与纳米粘土比率（SN）为5：1、10：1和10：3的纳米复合材料，并用于镍和钴的吸收。进行了差示扫描量热法（DSC），傅立叶变换红外光谱（FTIR），扫描电子显微镜（SEM）和X射线衍射（XRD）的表征技术，以确定纳米复合材料以及豆类淀粉的理化和形态特性。金属离子的初始浓度 改变pH和SN比以评估淀粉/ Na-MMT纳米复合材料可从水溶液中去除钴和镍的程度。实验结果用于计算Langmuir和Freundlich等温线的参数。发现pH = 4.5， 基于去除率（97.1％）和对镍离子的吸附性，C _o = 100 ppm（溶液中的金属浓度）和SN = 10：1是最合适的条件。对于钴，使用pH = 6，C _o  = 140 ppm和SN = 10：3可获得最高的去除率（78.07％）。数据对Langmuir和Freundlich等温线的拟合表明了两种重金属的多层吸附过程。这些结果表明，纳米复合淀粉/ Na-MMT在废水修复中具有吸引人的吸附性能。由于与未改性淀粉相比吸附效率提高了35％，因此强烈建议将Na-MMT掺入豆淀粉基质中以吸收镍。