**2. Materials and methods**

### **2.1 Materials**

Pine cones are naturally occurring agricultural wastes found in a plantation in Vanderbijlpark, Gauteng, South Africa. All the chemicals and reagents used throughout this study were of analytical grade reagents and used without any further purification. Acrylicamide, ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN), nitric acid (HNO3), sodium hydroxide (NaOH), ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH), ferric sulfate (FeSO4) and methylene blue was supplied by Merck, South Africa. Deionized was used for the preparation of all solutions. The stock solution for methylene blue (1000 mg/L) was prepared by dissolving the required amount of dyes in a 1000 ml of deionized water and the stock solution was further diluted for batch experiments. *Characterization of Grafted Acrylamide onto Pine Magnetite Composite for the Removal… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92114*
