Application of mesoporous zirconia coating on coal cinder for inorganic arsenic removal from aqueous solution

Abstract

A mesoporous zirconia film was simply introduced to coat coal cinder by means of sol–gel technique. Zirconia coated coal cinder was employed in removal of As(III) and As(V) from aqueous solution followed inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry detection. At NaOH/HCl medium, both As(III) and As(V) can be quantitatively adsorbed at a wide pH range of 2.0–9.0. Adsorption process followed well pseudo-second order rate kinetics and Freundlich isotherm equations. The maximum adsorptive capacity of the coated coal cinder for arsenic was 95.7 mg g−1.