Removal of Heavy Metals from Wastewater by Adsorption on Coir Pith Activated Carbon
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Date
2007-02-08
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Abstract
The activated carbon prepared from coconut coir pith by potassiumhydroxide activation was found to exhibit remarkable adsorption capacityfor cadmium, copper, and zinc. Batch equilibrium tests showedthat the extent of metal removal was found to be dependent on initialconcentration, contact time, pH, and carbon dose. It was found that atpH values below 3, the adsorption of metal ions was very less and waseffective above pH 6. The metal ion sorption was found to follow theFreundlich model. The kinetics of adsorption of metal ions followedIst order. The agglomerated coir pith carbon was evaluated for theeffect of flow rate and bed depth in column experiments. Linearrelationships between bed depth and service time were obtained for allthe metal ions by performing bed-depth service time (BDST) analysis.The adsorbed metal ions could be quantitatively recovered by using3331 1.0M HCl, and the capacity of carbon remained unaffected when putto repeated use for the removal of metal ions from aqueoussolutions. The efficiency of carbon when applied to industrial effluentswas found to be superior in removal of metal ions compared with thecommercial ones.
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Coir pith, Activated carbon, Heavy metals, Adsorption, Batch studies, Freundlich isotherm, Kinetics
Citation
Separation Science and Technology,39(14):3331–3351,2004