Abstract
The demand for clean water is on the increase as rapid industrialization is still contributing to pollution. Nowadays, as water is the basic need for mankind, efforts have gathered momentum to decontaminate it in order to address the acute shortage of clean and pure water. Maize tassel was used as the precursor for making activated carbon for the adsorption of Pb(II) ions. The product obtained was characterized and utilized for the removal of Pb(II) from aqueous solutions over a wide range of initial metal ion concentration (10–50 mg/L), contact time (5–300 min), adsorbent dose (0.1–2.5 g), and pH (2–12). The optimum set of conditions for biosorption of Pb(II) ion were found to be initial concentration 10 mg/L, dosage 1.2 g, and pH 5.4. The adsorption data conformed to both the Langmuir and the Freundlich isotherms but fitted best into the Langmuir model. TheR2for Langmuir equation was 0.9997 and that for Freundlich was 0.9515. The Langmuir monolayer adsorption capacity of the activated carbon was calculated to be 37.31 mg/g. The results indicate that activated carbon might be used to effectively adsorb Pb(II) ions from wastewater treatment plants.
Highlights
Nowadays water pollution by heavy metals is fast growing due to natural processes and increasing human activities which include mining, agriculture, and manufacturing industries
Pb is the most significant toxin of the trace metal ions, and human exposure to the inorganic forms is through ingestion of food, water, and inhalation
The present study aims at assessing the adsorption potential of activated carbon prepared from maize tassel for the removal of Pb(II) ions from aqueous solutions
Summary
Nowadays water pollution by heavy metals is fast growing due to natural processes and increasing human activities which include mining, agriculture, and manufacturing industries. These heavy metals are nondegradable and cannot be detoxified biologically [1]. The removal of metals from water has been previously achieved by various methods such as ion exchange, precipitation, oxidation, reduction, and membrane filtration [6, 7] Compared with these techniques, adsorption technology, using some cheap, available agricultural plants, algal biomass, and cyanobacteria, has been reported [8,9,10]. The interactive effects of process parameters such as adsorbent dosage, agitation time, solution pH, and initial concentration on the adsorption capacity of activated carbon towards Pb(II) are demonstrated
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