Abstract
Background: Heavy metals contamination of surface and groundwater is a major environmental problem. Clay minerals are porous and are efficient to adsorb metal ions. Amongst the available treatment technologies, adsorption is the most cost-effective, easy to operate, scalable, and replicable to remediate heavy metals from water solution. Aim: This study aimed to assess the adsorption performance of clay pellets of natural aluminosilicates, bentonite (29%), kaolin (4%) and zeolite (67%) to remove heavy metals from aqueous solutions. Methods: The effect of optimal operating conditions like contact time, adsorbent dose, pH, and heavy metals initial concentration has been studied. Kinetic and equilibrium studies were also performed. Adsorbents were characterized using FTIR analysis. Results and Discussion: Optimum values for contact time, adsorbent dose, pH, and initial concentration of lead, copper, and cadmium were; 240 min; 25 g/L; 4.3; and 4mg/L, 7 mg/L and 2 mg/L, respectively. The Langmuir isotherm was the best-fitted isotherm model for the three metals. Adsorption kinetics showed that the lead and copper adsorption followed the pseudo-second-order model while cadmium suited with the pseudo-first-order model. The selectivity of the pellets towards the metal ions was in the order of Pb > Cu > Cd. Conclusions: The new combination of bentonite-kaolinite-zeolite pellets worked well in tertiary wastewater treatment and successfully utilized as a natural adsorbent in multimetal solution. The results confirmed that the used clay pellets have better adsorption capacity than many other reported studies. Maximum adsorption capacity can be further increased by adjusting the calcination temperature and applying chemical treatments to the clay pellets before extrusion. The response surface analysis evaluated the predicted optimal values for the four operating factors.
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