Adsorptive abatement of Pb2+ and crystal violet using chitosan-modified coal nanocomposites: A down flow column study

Abstract

Every moment huge amounts of industrial wastewater are contaminating our surface/groundwater sources by discharging into the environment directly. This crude wastewater is the most problematic subject because it is the matrix of hazardous toxicants, which can drastically damage public health-safety. So, it is urgent to purify before discharging/reusing. This study focused on the recent improvement and latent implication of Activated Chitosan-Modified Coal(ACMC) bionanocomposite filter. Here, we briefly described how ACMC was produced and its potential application in the removal of Pb2+ and Crystal Violet (CV) effectively from wastewater. However, the influence of different parameters like initial concentration (20–40 ppm), volumetric flow rate (4–6 mL/min) and bed height (0.4–1.0 cm) were investigated appropriately meanwhile the adsorbent amount was (1.0–2.0 g). The adsorption efficiency and removal percent were strongly correlated with inlet concentration, flow rate, and bed height. The highest removal capacity and percentage were found nearly (243.08 and 238.51)mg/g additionally (78.48 and 82.50)% for Pb2+ and CV. Finally, three well-known column adsorption models namely Thomas, Yoon-Nelson and Adam-Bohart model were applied for the fitting of experimental data which exhibited a decent agreement with all three models that are also suitable for the description of breakthrough curve (BTC) and supports the Langmuir isotherm by following second-order reversible reaction kinetics. Thus this new class of ACMC nanoadsorbents could be beneficially used for the real-time bulk scale industrial wastewater treatment as a suitable replacement of hazardous fossil-based synthetic ones for sustainable environmental protection.