Preparation of polyaniline montmorillonite clay composites for the removal of diethyl hexyl phthalate from aqueous solutions

The work presents the synthesis of polyaniline functionalized montmorillonite (PANI/MMT) clay composites and evaluation of their performance as an adsorbent for the mitigation of toxic diethyl hexyl phthalate (DEHP) from water. The formation of composite was confirmed by different analytical techniques such as FTIR, zeta potential analysis, XRD, SEM, and AFM. The adsorption capacity of PANI/MMT was superior to MMT. DEHP followed partition mechanism on PANI/MMT whereas MMT favored surface adsorption mechanism. The performance of PANI/MMT for DEHP removal was unaffected by the change in pH of solution, change in salinity, and hardness contents in aqueous system and consecutive adsorption desorption cycles compared to MMT. Furthermore, both PANI/MMT and MMT exhibited greater adsorption capacities as compared to the previously published work and showed satisfactory performance in real water samples.