Chitosan is a kind of biodegradable natural polysaccharide, and it is a very promising adsorber material for removing metal ions from aqueous solutions. In this study, chitosan-based magnetic adsorbent CMC@Fe₃O₄ was synthesized by a one-step method using carboxymethyl chitosan (CMC) and ferric salts under relatively mild conditions. The Fe₃O₄ microspheres were formed and the core–shell structure of CMC@Fe₃O₄ was synthesized in the meantime, which was well characterized via SEM/TEM, XRD, VSM, FT-IR, thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), XPS, size distribution, and zeta potential. The effects of initial arsenic concentration, pH, temperature, contact time, and ionic strength on adsorption quantity of inorganic arsenic was studied through batch adsorption experiments. The magnetic adsorbent CMC@Fe₃O₄ displayed satisfactory adsorption performance for arsenic in water samples, up to 20.1 mg/g. The optimal conditions of the adsorption process were pH 3.0, 30−50 °C, and a reaction time of 15 min. The adsorption process can be well described by pseudo-second-order kinetic model, suggesting that chemisorption was main rate-controlling step. The Langmuir adsorption model provided much higher correlation coefficient than that of Freundlich adsorption model, indicating that the adsorption behavior is monolayer adsorption on the surface of the magnetic adsorbents. The above results have demonstrated that chitosan-based magnetic adsorbent CMC@Fe₃O₄ is suitable for the removal of inorganic arsenic in water.

This paper reports on the hydrophobic modification of cotton fabric grafted with 1-octadecene via an activators regenerated by electron transfer (ARGET) atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) mechanism. Particularly, the activation treatment of raw cotton fabric, its influence on the graft-copolymerization by the ARGET-ATRP method, along with the super-hydrophobicity and hydrophobic stability of the modified cotton fabric are discussed. Furthermore, the microstructure and elemental variation were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and the energy dispersion spectrum (EDS) technique. The results show that chemical activation of the raw cotton fabric can significantly improve the follow-up hydrophobic modification process. Specifically, the contact angle of the hydrophobically modified cotton fabric increased to 145° after activation, and thus, this fabric presents more stable hydrophobicity (corresponding to a 5.5% contact angle attenuation) than a non-activated fabric. The hydrophobic modification reaction was carried out using a chemically optimum stoichiometric ratio of m(CuBr₂) : m(C₉H₂₃N₃) : m(C₂H₅OH) : m(C₁₈H₃₆) : m(C₆H₈O₆) = 0.015 : 0.052 : 17.9 : 2.4 : 0.05, at a temperature of 30–55 °C over 8 h. Furthermore, the SEM and AFM images revealed that more copolymer micro/nano-level particles were present on the surface of the fibers of the hydrophobically modified cotton fabric, indicating that the hydrophobic property and stability of the cotton fabric increase with the grafting density on the cotton fabric.