In this work magnetic cellulose xanthate was prepared with two different routes, i.e., fabrication of Fe 3 O 4 @ cellulose followed by preparation of xanthate, and a one step approach by adding iron source to cellulose xanthate solution. The cellulose acts as both as reducing agent to convert Fe 3+ ions to Fe 2+ and template for growth of Fe 3 O 4 . The prepared composites were characterized by SEM, XRD, VSM, EDS, TGA, and FT-IR techniques. Magnetic sorbents were applied for adsorption of silver from acidic medium, and results revealed that the one step prepared composite has better performance in comparison with Fe 3 O 4 @cellulose xanthate, as the maximum adsorption capacity within 5 min extraction time was 166 and 15.6 mg g −1 , respectively. The relative selectivity factor (α r ) of Ag + with respect to other cations, such as Zn 2+ , Cr 3+ , Co 2+ , Ni 2+ , Pb 2+ , and Pd 2+ , is 252, 74.8, 2543, 924, 3837, and 26.6, respectively. Moreover, the reusability of the sorbent was investigated by elution the adsorbed ions with 3.0 mL of 0.4 mol/L Na 2 S 2 O 3 solution. It was found that the recovery was (90−97%) after 3 cycles of sorption and desorption. Finally this method was applied to analyze the silver ions in tap water, dental radiology agent, and synthetic samples.
