Synthesis of a novel polysuccinimide based resin for the ultrahigh removal of anionic azo dyes from aqueous solution

A novel hyper-cross-linked polyamide resin (PSI-PA) has been synthesized for the ultrahigh removal of Congo red (CR) and Eriochrom Black T (EBT) from aqueous solution. The mesoporous resin, having a specific surface area (98.80 m² g⁻¹), showed maximum adsorption capacity (Q_max) of 522.18 mg g⁻¹ for CR (pH 9.0) and 460.34 mg g⁻¹ for EBT (pH 6) at room temperature. The adsorption of these dyes was rapid and the equilibrium was attained within 4 h. The kinetic data was well-fitted by pseudo-second-order rate equation. Analysis of the surface chemical composition of loaded PSI-PA by XPS revealed the appearance of a new peak at around 166.0 eV (S 2p), confirming the adsorption of the sulfur-based dyes onto the resin. Examination of experimental data of dyes adsorption by a variety of non-linear adsorption isotherms and kinetic models suggested that the Langmuir model exhibited the best fit with high correlation coefficients for both CR (R² = 0.9966) and EBT (R² = 0.9934). PSI-PA has been extensively characterized by FT-IR, solid state ¹³C (CP-MAS) NMR, EDS, TGA and BET analysis. Moreover, PSI-PA exhibited 82% removal efficiency for dyes in simulated effluents, manifesting its promise and utility for treating industrial effluent.