Constructed the hydrotalcite-chitosan beads though in-situ grown strategy for efficient and deep capture of lead from alcoholic beverage.

• A facile one-pot method for synthesizing 3D honeycomb-like LDHs/chitosan beads. • The oriented aggregation and growth of the LDHs induced the unique structure. • The MgFe-LDH/chitosan beads exhibited well removal performance to Pb2+ in spirit. Presence of toxic lead (Pb2+) in alcoholic beverages in trace concentrations has been documented in literature. However, only a handful of facile and inexpensive treatments can effectively remove Pb2+ from alcoholic beverages. Herein, a convenient approach for the synthesis of hydride beads is presented that is composed of chitosan and layered double hydroxides (LDHs), in which the LDH nanosheets were grown on the chitosan skeletons and resulted in a hierarchical structure with interconnected network of LDH nanosheets. In particular, the as-synthesized MgFe-LDH/chitosan beads were used as a model to evaluate their capacity to remove trace Pb2+ from spirit. The as-synthesized MgFe-LDH/chitosan beads exhibited good stability, and excellent removal capacity for Pb2+ that could decrease the concentration of Pb2+ from 2 to 0.005 mg/L, which is well below the acceptable limits in alcoholic beverages in China (0.5 mg/L). The results from X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and structural characterizations confirmed the presence of strong interactions between Mg sites and Pb2+. Furthermore, the experiments with laboratory-scale column system demonstrated the potential feasibility of the proposed method in practical applications. It is envisioned that the work can provide a convenient, efficient, safe and cost-effective strategy to address the issue of treating alcoholic beverages contaminated by heavy metals. Additionally, a series of LDH-based beads were also synthesized using the proposed method, offering a platform to address the challenges faced when LDHs are used in powdered forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]