Green treatment of chromium contaminated water using Spongomorpha indica

Abstract

The current study presents chromium (VI) biosorption performance of Spongomorpha indica from synthetic medium. Spongomorpha indica, naturally available green marine alga was selected as an adsorbent. The influence of three process parameters i.e., initial pH, initial chromium (VI) ions concentration and Spongomorpha indica biomass dosage, on the performance of biosorbent was studied. CCD of RSM was adopted to optimize process parameters and the results were analyzed using ANOVA to determine significance of influential parameters and their interaction effect on process efficiency. The predicted optimum values i.e., the biosorption 95.29%, pH 5.62, initial Cr(VI) concentration 31.82 mg/L and Spongomorpha indica biomass dosage 0.04 g/L through statistical optimization were found to be approximately equal to the confirmation experiment measured values. The results of kinetic studies revealed that the mechanism involved in metal capturing by biosorbent is ionic interaction between metal cations and various surface ionic groups of biomass with heterogeneous mass transfer. Equilibrium isotherm studies disclosed that Langmuir model was well correlated to equilibrium data. FTIR and SEM analysis were recorded for surface characterization of Spongomorpha indica.