Abstract
The present paper aims to develop a low cost, efficient, and environmentally-friendly process to purify (industrial) waters contaminated by copper by the use of oil mill wastes, through kinetic, thermodynamic, and equilibrium investigations. To do so, the raw adsorbent was characterized using different analytical techniques including X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Then, the interaction between copper and olive residues were examined during batch adsorption tests at various operating parameters, such as pH, initial concentration, contact time, and particle size. Kinetic data were best fitted with Broeurs-Sotolongo kinetic model. Additionally, it was found that film and intraparticle diffusion steps controlled simultaneously the mass transfer of copper onto olive mill solid waste. Among the eight tested models, Broeurs-Sotolongo isotherm suited the most the sorption, with regards to the function errors analysis. It was deduced that the adsorption of copper does not involve chemical bonds with high energy which allows easier regeneration steps and higher number of biosorbent regeneration cycles without any need for applying high temperature in the desorption reaction systems. The adsorption capacity (18.93 mg/g) calculated on the basis of this model was close to the experimental value (18.4 mg/g) but more interestingly it brought up that 50% of the generated amounts of olive wastes in Tunisia could eliminate 1.84 kTons of copper from industrial waters.
Highlights
The rapid development of industries threats aquatic and human lives through the discharge of contaminated wastewater on the environment [1,2]
Recorded by Gonzales-Garcia (2018) [6]. These values are comparable to many other bio-sorbents such recorded by Gonzales-Garcia (2018) [6]
These values are comparable to many other bio-sorbents as orange peels (9.2%), Pecan shells (10.4%), peach stones (9.3%), stone pines (9.8%) [6]
Summary
The rapid development of industries threats aquatic and human lives through the discharge of contaminated wastewater on the environment [1,2]. Metal ions are the major water pollutants, with. Copper is one major heavy metal used in several industrial processes such as textile, mining, wire drawing, paint manufacturing, electronics, electroplating, petrochemical, and printing operations [6,7,8]. The discharge of wastewater rich in copper in the environment can affect significantly plants, soil, atmosphere, animals, and human life upon entering the food chain [4,9]. Different water treatment technologies are generally employed for heavy metals removal including coagulation, ion exchange, membrane process, reverse osmosis, solvent extraction, chemical
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