Biosorbent for tungsten species removal from water: Effects of co-occurring inorganic species

Abstract

The effect of co-occurring inorganic species on the removal of tungsten from water was investigated using biosorbent (i.e., chitosan coated montmorillonite clay). Simulated natural water and well water from Fallon, NV were used for this study. The concentrations of tungsten (21–541 mg/L) and inorganic species ([H 2CO 3] = 0–4.2 mg/L, [H 4SiO 4] = 0–90 mg/L, and [SO 2− 4] = 0–400 mg/L) in simulated feed water were varied. The concentration of tungsten in the well water was 26 μg/L. The pH level of simulated feed water and well water was adjusted to 4 since this pH was found to be the most effective pH for the tungsten removal using chitosan coated clay. Tungsten removal without the existence of co-occurring inorganic species decreases from 99.8 to 87.1% with an increase in initial tungsten concentration from 21 to 541 mg/L. It reduces further as the co-occurring inorganic species concentration increases. The percentage of the tungsten removal ranges between 68.2–93.8%, 66.7–94.2%, and 53.6–93.7% for simulated natural water containing varied amount of H 2CO 3, H 4SiO 4, and SO 2− 4, respectively. The adsorption kinetic data could be best described by the pseudo second order expression. The adsorption equilibrium data was modeled with the Langmuir, Temkin, and Freundlich equations and was found to be represented well by the Langmuir equation. The essential characteristics of the Langmuir isotherm indicate that the adsorption of tungsten on chitosan coated clay is favorable regardless of the presence of interfering species. Compared to natural clay, chitosan coated clay has about 116 times larger adsorption capacity per gram of chitosan, which makes it a superior adsorbent. However, the maximum tungsten adsorption capacity decreases in the presence of co-occurring species since the co-occurring species suppress the adsorption. For the well water treated with biosorbent, the tungsten concentration in the product water was found to be lower than the detection limit (1 μg/L) of the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS). The repeatable results obtained from the treatment of both simulated and well water suggest that using chitosan coated clay can be an efficient adsorbent for tungsten removal from contaminated sites.