Abstract
As a low cost adsorbent source, a mixture of activated animal bones has been investigated on their efficiency in chromium ion removal from aqueous solution. Adsorption parameters such as contact time, biosorbent size, pH, biosorbent dosage, temperature and concentrations were investigated. Maximum adsorption of hexavalent chromium occurred at 35minutes, 53µm size of adsorbent, pH = 6, 70mg/L of chromium ion, 3g of adsorbent dosage and 303K. The experimental data from the adsorption processes were all tested with Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. Both isotherms showed good correlations. The higher value of R2 = 0.9938 from Freundlich isotherm over the R2 = 0.99 value of Langmuir isotherm showed a better fitness of the adsorption process to Freundlich isotherm over Langmuir model. It can be concluded that any activated carbon from the bones of Cow, Donkey, Chicken and Horse are effective and can be used in industries for removal of hexavalent chromium.
Highlights
Heavy metals such as chromium are present in water effluents from several chemical industries
The applications of activated carbons are vast, which led to the current research on the usefulness of animal bones as an efficient adsorbent for heavy metal removal from liquid industrial wastes
When the adsorbate molecules are adsorbed on the interface, there will be a restriction to the movement of the adsorbate and this leads to decrease in the entropy of adsorption [4, 12, 15]
Summary
Heavy metals such as chromium are present in water effluents from several chemical industries. The applications of activated carbons are vast, which led to the current research on the usefulness of animal bones as an efficient adsorbent for heavy metal removal from liquid industrial wastes. Purification of waste-water contaminated by heavy metals are carried out by several processes such as ion exchange membranes [9, 10], flocculation by coagulation [14, 16, 20], electrochemical processes [9, 11], chemical precipitation [4, 18] and through adsorption processes [3, 5, 13, 18, 19] Among these methods, adsorption process is a very cost free technique making use of environmental wastes as an adsorbent, thereby keeping the environment clean from these wastes. There are many known substances that has the ability of adsorbing ions when exposed on their surfaces such as silica gel, alumina, activated charcoal, earth fullers, clays etc [29, 32]
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