Ecological Systems and Devices Annotation << Back Development of Innovative highly Effective Sorbents for Water Purification from heavy Metals Kornilov K.N., Roeva N.N. The article provides an overview of a new type of polymer sorbents that exhibit high efficiency in absorbing heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions. The specified sorbents are polyafmolites (ion exchange resins) and are obtained by polycondensation between readily available components: urea (carbamide), formaldehyde and aminoacetic acid (CFA), ortho-aminobenzoic acid on a matrix of epoxy resin "epoxymol" and polyethylenepolyamine (OABP), urea, formaldehyde and phenolsulfophthaleic acid (known in analytical chemistry as the indicator "phenol red") (CFP), urea, formaldehyde and bromocresol purple dye (CFBP). The effect of pH of the medium and reaction temperature on the molecular weight of the resulting polymer products was studied. The conditions of their synthesis were compared with the conditions for obtaining previously studied ion-exchange polyampholytes of the same type. The IR spectra of the complexes of both the sorbents themselves and their complexes with heavy metals: copper, nickel, zinc, cobalt and cadmium ions are given. Based on the analysis of the IR spectra of the elemental analysis complexes, the structural formulas of the polymer sorbents and their complex compounds with heavy metal ions were suggested. The results of studying the surfaces of the sorbents by scanning electron microscopy (SEM analysis) are summarized. The images obtained by this method indicate that the proposed ion-exchange resins have very good high sorption capacity or the ability to absorb ions of various metals. The high sorption capacity of the developed polyampholytes was confirmed by studying their main sorption characteristic - Static Exchange Capacity in relation to heavy metal ions. For the most effective sorbents, the sorption process was analyzed using Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. Keywords: polyampholyte, polycondensation, ion exchange resin, sorption, elemental analysis, IR spectrum, scanning electron microscopy, water purification. DOI: 10.25791/esip.7.2025.1533 Pp. 11-21.