Highly effective adsorption performance of carboxymethyl cellulose microspheres crosslinked with epichlorohydrin

Different sizes of epichlorohydrin‐crosslinked carboxymethyl cellulose (E/CMC) microspheres were successfully prepared by an inverse suspension method. With further modification by monochloroacetic acid (MCA), MCA–E/CMC microspheres were successfully synthesized. The structures and morphologies of these microspheres were analyzed with polarizing microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller analysis, and laser particle ζ‐potential recording. The adsorption properties of the microspheres were investigated with methylene blue (MB) as a model pollutant. The highest adsorption amount of MB (998.2 mg/g) onto MCA–E_0.7/CMC which was the samples which treated with 0.7 mL of C₄H₉OH was obtained. Meanwhile, the effect of the operating parameters, such as the contact time, initial pH of the solution, temperature, and initial dye concentration, on the adsorption amount and MB removal were systematically studied. The results show that pseudo‐second‐order kinetic model provided the best correlation with the experimental data for the adsorption of MB onto the MCA–E_0.7/CMC microspheres. Both the physical and chemical adsorption played the main role in the adsorption process. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134, 44363.