LAUSR

To combat environmental pollution resulting from discharge of hazardous contaminants into water streams, novel porous biocompatible urea-urethane aerogels in situ impregnated with catalytic metallic nanoparticles were synthesized. FTIR confirmed the formation of highly structured 2D-bifurcated hydrogen bonding network among neighboring urea groups creating aerogels that are strong enough to withstand the pressures of supercritical drying. In-situ impregnation with the catalytic metallic nanoparticles ensured that the systems are efficient in adsorbing, degrading and removing a variety of hazardous contaminants from polluted water. BET measurements indicated an almost reversible Type II isotherm and confirmed the macroporosity of the samples with surface area of around 6 m2 g−1. And swelling capvity of up to 700% The equilibrium uptake capacity of each contaminant increased with increasing the initial concentration due to the increasing driving force and has reached more than 90%. Thermodynamics interpretation indicated exothermic spontaneous processes for all systems with R2 values around 0.9. Almost all adsorption processes followed a Langmuirian type behavior. Kinetics profile revealed that the adsorption is best fitted by pseudo-second order model with an intra-particle diffusion model suggesting that both pore diffusion and contaminant uptake by the aerogels play pivotal role in controlling the kinetics of the adsorption process.