Abstract
Copper is from one of the most important heavy metals, which adheres to the ecological system by harmful human activities. It is toxic, persistent, and non-biodegradable metal, which causes environmental pollution in both the atmosphere and aquatic environment. Copper pollution found in undesirable concentrations in industrial wastewaters especially from electronics industries, cooling systems and plating industry. Physical methods are mostly applied to remove Cu(II) including adsorption and membrane processes. Nanoparticles (e.g. nano zero valent iron (nZVI), carbon nanotubes, titanium dioxide nanoparticle) have been considered to be promising alternatives to conventional adsorbents. They have advantages by having more surface area and nano-sized pores, which helps to adsorb more molecules. In this study, in order to enhance adsorption by activated carbon and lower the cost of nanoparticle synthesis, nZVI is synthesized on activated carbon(AC-nZVI). It was investigated for its effectiveness in copper removal from aqueous solution. The effect of AC-nZVI dosage, pH and the initial concentration of Cu were investigated. Adsorption capacities are obtained for nZVI and AC-nZVI as 414 mg/g and 510 mg/g, respectively. 200mg/L AC-nZVI concentration was determined as sufficient for %96 removal rate. Langmuir isotherm gave the best fit and the maximum adsorption capacity according to Langmuir isotherm is calculated as 588,24 mg/g.
Highlights
Nanotechnology became a popular topic in environmental engineering practices with increasing number of studies on soil remediation and water and wastewater pollution applications
The highest removal rate of 99.50% was achieved with 400 mg/L after 20 minutes of contact time. 200 mg/L ACnZVI concentration can be selected as optimum concentration in according with low increase in higher adsorbent concentration
Even the initial concentration of copper was as high as 150 mg/L, removal rate was obtained at 81% with 400 mg/L AC-nano zero valent iron (nZVI) concentration in 30 minutes of contact time. 50 mg/L of the selected lowest initial copper concentration was almost totally removed by AC-nZVI
Summary
Nanotechnology became a popular topic in environmental engineering practices with increasing number of studies on soil remediation and water and wastewater pollution applications. Conducted studies on nano zero valent iron, especially on heavy metal removal, demonstrated that it is effective by means of its high adsorption capacity [1,2,3,4]. Heavy metals enter to the ecological system by human activities and bioaccumulate through food chains and lead carcinogenic effects on human [4,5,6]. They have persistent and non-biodegradable characteristics, which cause environmental pollution in both atmospheric and aquatic environment [4,5,6,7]. Many studies have demonstrated that nano zero valent iron (nZVI) can effectively be used to remove chrome and arsenic as heavy metals [13,14,15,16]
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