In this study, graphene
oxide (GO) was functionalized with 3,5-diaminobenzoic
acid (DABA) by a one-step method to produce functionalized graphene
oxide (FGO). FGO is a new type of absorbent crystalline substance
that has a high surface area and a large porosity site as well as
a large number of dentate functional groups which lead to enhanced
adsorption performance for heavy metal ions. The adsorption efficiency
of FGO for Pb+2 and Al+3 metal ions was extra
satisfactory when compared with GO due to the ease of design and the
homogeneous structure of FGO. The structure of synthesized GO and
FGO was confirmed by different techniques such as FTIR, XRD, TGA,
BET nitrogen adsorption–desorption methods, and TEM analyses.
The mass of utilized adsorbents, the pH of the medium, the concentration
of ionic species in the medium, temperature, and process time were
all investigated as variables in the adsorbent procedure. The experimental
data recorded that the maximum adsorption efficiency of the 0.5 g/L
FGO composite was 99.7 and 99.8% for Pb+2 and Al+3 metal ions, respectively, while in the case of using GO, the maximum
adsorption efficiency was 92.6 and 91.9% at ambient temperature in
a semineutral medium at pH 6 after 4 h. The adsorption results were
in good conformity with the Freundlich model and pseudo-second-order
kinetics for Pb+2 and Al+3 metal ions. Also,
the reusability study indicates that FGO can be used repeatedly at
least for five cycles with a slight significant loss in its efficiency.