Hi Karl, 

You can start by trying to prepare a 1% w/v solution. The secret is to add the sodium alginate to the water very slowly and with vigorous stirring to avoid the formation of clumps. You may need to stir for a couple minutes to fully dissolve the material. 

If you want to form gels with copper you can just prepare a 0.1 M CuSO4 solution and add the polysaccharide solution to it drop-wise, This will give you spherical Cu-Alginate hydrogels. you can check how we did it for Fe(III): 

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/am506772x

You can adjust the concentrations of cooper and alginate to change the properties of the final gel. 

Hope that helps, 

Giuseppe

Thank you for your response. it will really help us.