Isothermal Modelling of the Adsorption of Chromium onto Calcium Alginate Nanoparticles

Abstract

Because of its extensive usage in industrial applications such as leather tanning, metallurgy, electroplating, and refractory materials, chromium is one of the most dangerous trace elements introduced into surface and ground waters. The sorption isotherm of chromium sorption onto calcium alginate nanoparticles were analyzed using ten models—Henry, Langmuir, Dubinin-Radushkevich, Freundlich, BET, Toth, Sips, Fritz-Schlunder IV, Baudu and Fritz-Schlunder V, and fitted using non-linear regression. Only the Toth and Fritz-Schlunder V models were unable to fit the data. Statistical analysis based on root-mean-square error (RMSE), adjusted coefficient of determination (adjR2), bias factor (BF), accuracy factor (AF), corrected AICc (Akaike Information Criterion), BIC and HQC showed that the Langmuir model was the best model in terms of overall best criteria. The calculated evidence ratio was 7 with an AICc probability value of 0.87 indicating that the best model was at least 7 times better than the nearest best model, which was Freundlich. The calculated Langmuir parameters qmL value of 79.174 mg/g (95% confidence interval from 50.702 to 107.646) and bL value of 0.332 L/mg (95% confidence interval from 0.294 to 0.371) is not much different from the linearized published work for the qmL value of 145 mg/g but lower than the bL value of 0.34 L/mg. The nonlinear regression method allows for the parameter values to be represented in the 95% confidence interval range which can better allow comparison with published results.