Selective Sorption of Heavy Metals by Renewable Polysaccharides.

Renewable and biodegradable polysaccharides have attracted interest for their wide applicability, among them their use as sorbents for heavy metal ions. Their high sorption capacity is due mainly to the acidic groups that populate the polysaccharide backbone, for example, carboxylic groups in alginate and sulfate ester groups in the iota and lambda carrageenans. In this study, these three polysaccharides were employed, alone or in different mixtures, to recover different heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions.