A green approach to remove acetamiprid insecticide using pistachio shell-based modified activated carbon; economical groundwater treatment

Abstract

This study deals with an economical and green approach for the successful removal of acetamiprid (ATP) from groundwater samples using pistachio shell-based modified activated carbon (MAC). The prepared MAC has an apparent surface area (SBET) of 1158.7 m2 g−1, total pore (Vtotal) of 0.982 cm3 g−1, and micropore (Vmicro) volumes of 0.841 cm3 g−1, and pore diameter (Pdia) of 11.18 nm. The maximum removal efficiency of 98.6% was obtained at the optimal condition of the ATP concentration of 10 mg L−1, solution pH of 6.5, the contact time of 23 min, and adsorbent dosage of 300 mg L−1. It was in good accordance with the predicted removal efficiency of 99.3% by the developed model. According to the analysis of variance (ANOVA), the high F-value of 797.5 and the very low P-value of <0.0001 confirm that the proposed model is highly significant. The ATP concentration of the groundwater sample was reduced to zero after applying the proposed process. The obtained results confirmed that modifying the activated carbon by ferric chloride increased the surface area, total pore volume, and the adsorption capacity as compared to the commercial activated carbon (CAC) and raw activated carbon (RAC). ATP adsorption followed the pseudo-second-order kinetics model with the Akaike information criterion (AIC) of 0.101 and 0.114 for the synthetic and real samples that suggest the treatment process controlled under the chemisorption mechanism. The equilibrium studies were well fitted to the Langmuir isotherm with the AIC of 1.38, which indicates that the ATP adsorption is monolayer and homogeneous. The maximum adsorption capacity (qm) of 86.1 and 83.6 mg g−1, and RL of 0.0312 and 0.055 were found for synthetic and real samples, respectively.