Investigation of the Electrical Field Effect on Silver Nanoparticles Stabilized by Sodium Citrate and Polyvinylpyrrolidone

Investigation of electrical field effect on nanoparticles can be important in the electrochemical treatment of industrial and urban wastewaters contaminated by nanoparticles. Because the excessive presence of nanoparticles in the environment can be harmful to organisms and humans. The behavior of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) under an applied electric field depends primarily on their stabilizing agent. This research is aimed at investigating the behavior of AgNPs and their stabilizers under the electric field, which called “electrocoagulation”. Silver nitrate and hydrazine hydrate were used as the sources of silver ion and reducing agent, respectively. In separate experiments, sodium citrate and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) were used as nanoparticle stabilizers. The stability of the particles was studied when an electrical current was applied with different voltages. The efficiency of the EC process was investigated for different of AgNP sols. With sodium citrate for different voltages, after using the electric field for 90min, the plasmon resonance peak of the sample disappeared, reflecting the removal of the AgNPs in the sol by 99.91%. With PVP, by using different voltages of the EC, for10 min, the absorbance peaks disappeared, and removal efficiency of the AgNPs reached 99.98%. Based on these results, it can be recognized that the AgNPs stabilized by citrate, are slightly more stable, whereas AgNPs solutions prepared by PVP showed better results on floc formation and, therefore, agglomerated more easily.