Abstract
Because of increasing environmental awareness, it is becoming more important to remove harmful elements from water solutions. This study used activated carbon (AC) derived from waste wood-based panels as the base material, oxidized with nitric acid (OAC), and grafted with iminodiacetic acid (IDA-OAC) to improve the adsorption capacity and affinity for metals. The characterization of AC, OAC, and IDA-OAC was conducted via FTIR, SEM, N2 adsorption and desorption analysis, elemental analysis, Boehm titration, and point of zero charge (PZC). The instrument studies proved the modified increasing of the functional groups of the adsorbents. Moreover, batch and column experiments were conducted to evaluate the ability of the three adsorbents to remove copper ions from aqueous solution. In batch sorption, IDA-OAC had the highest adsorption capacity (84.51 mg/g) compared to OAC (54.74 mg/g) and AC (24.86 mg/g) at pH 5. The breakthrough point (Ct/Ci = 0.05) of copper ions for IDA-OAC occurred much later than AC in the column experiment (AC = 19 BV, IDA-OAC = 52 BV). The Langmuir isotherm and pseudo-second-model kinetics modeling could better fit with the data obtained from the batch sorption of AC, OAC, and IDA-OAC. The significant capacity and reusability of IDA-OAC displayed high applicability for water treatment.
Highlights
US EPA has reported that metal water pollution is a severe worldwide problem due to the rapid development of industry and technology [1]
After the nitric acid treatment, the peak was observed at 1700 cm−1 due to the C=O stretches of carboxyl or carbonyl groups [33], and the C-O stretching at 1216 cm−1 [34] proved that oxidation generates more oxygenated functional groups on the activated carbon
The peaks at 1384 cm−1 and 1140 cm−1 corresponded to C-N stretching [35], indicating the iminodiacetic acid (IDA) was successfully grafted on oxidized with nitric acid (OAC) [36]
Summary
US EPA has reported that metal water pollution is a severe worldwide problem due to the rapid development of industry and technology [1]. Copper is commonly found in industrial wastewater [4]. Copper poisoning can cause nausea, diarrhea, liver, and kidney failure due to long-term exposure to copper through contaminated food and water sources [5]. For these reasons, many techniques have been developed to effectively remove metals from wastewater to meet the discharge standard of water pollutants, such as ion exchange [6], electrochemical treatment [7], chemical precipitation [8], reverse osmosis [9], and adsorption [5,10,11]
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