Abstract
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•Polymer microgel particles have excellent ability to adsorb heavy metal ions from aqueous medium.•Adsorption of cobalt ions on microgel particles is a result of donor–acceptor interaction and occurs in various steps.•Reduction of adsorbed metal ions produced nanoparticles inside the sieves of polymer network.•Hybrid microgels were excellent catalysts for reductive degradation of toxic chemicals.
Microgels were obtained by method of free radical precipitation polymerization and characterized by TEM, DLS and FTIR. Adsorption of Co2+ ions was studied under various conditions of pH, concentration of metal ions and that of microgels. Different adsorption isotherms were applied to study mechanism of adsorption process. Kinetics and mechanism of the adsorption process was investigated by pseudo 1st order, pseudo 2nd order and intra-particle diffusion modeling. In situ reduction of Co2+ ions loaded into the polymer microgel was carried out to get hybrid system for catalytic degradation of 4-nitrophenol, Eosin and Methylene blue.