Kinetic and equilibrium study for the sorption of cadmium(II) ions from aqueous phase by eucalyptus bark

Abstract

The efficiency of eucalyptus bark as a low cost sorbent for removing cadmium ions from aqueous solution has been investigated in batch mode. The equilibrium data could be well described by the Langmuir isotherm but a worse fit was obtained by the Freundlich model. The five linearized forms of the Langmuir equation as well as the non-linear curve fitting analysis method were discussed. Results show that the non-linear method may be a better way to obtain the Langmuir parameters. Maximum cadmium uptake obtained at a temperature of 20 °C was 14.53 mg g −1. The influence of temperature on the sorption isotherms of cadmium has been also studied. The monolayer sorption capacity increased from 14.53 to 16.47 when the temperature was raised from 20 to 50 °C. The Δ G° values were negative, which indicates that the sorption was spontaneous in nature. The effect of experimental parameters such as contact time, cadmium initial concentration, sorbent dose, temperature, solution initial pH, agitation speed, and ionic strength on the sorption kinetics of cadmium was investigated. Pseudo-second-order model was evaluated using the six linear forms as well as the non-linear curve fitting analysis method. Modeling of kinetic results shows that sorption process is best described by the pseudo-second-order model using the non-linear method. The pseudo-second-order model parameters were function of the initial concentration, the sorbent dose, the solution pH, the agitation speed, the temperature, and the ionic strength.